This seemed to satisfy the assembled company. Elizabeth felt Mr Ware remove the Luger from her back, and it had presumably gone back inside his waistband as he gestured broadly with his free hand around, but not touching, her shoulders, guiding her to the exit.
‘Goodbye!’ he said. ‘See you in the morning, just when day is dawning!’
Elizabeth saw that now was her chance. He had had to put the gun away so that no one would see it. He had no power over her, but once they were out on the street, with no one else around, she would have no chance. He could do what he liked then. She would have to act now, right now. But do what? Scream? Cry out?
The drunk man with the yellow wig groaned, got to his feet, and began to stumble for the door by the bar, undoubtedly heading for the lavatory. Mr Ware’s hand was gently on her shoulder again. Now. Do something now.
‘There’s Noël,’ she said, suddenly. ‘Noël!’
Coward had appeared out of the crowd, now really holding a glass of champagne. Her high, yelping monosyllable should have been all but inaudible, but Coward’s extra-sensory awareness of social importance made him stop and break off a conversation he was having with two other younger men. He approached and addressed her with rather more of the facetious gallantry than had seemed appropriate earlier in the evening.
‘Ah, Lil,’ he said, bowing, ‘we were thinking of going to the Brown Bomber Club. One was hoping to discover how it got its name. One has the most appalling suspicions. Perhaps you would like to come along?’
‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth weakly, ‘Yes, thank you, Noël, I—’
But from the other side of the room, and behind Coward, Elizabeth could now see Katharine, with her bruised and battered face. It looked like a boy’s face, or a man’s face, and Elizabeth could see where the tooth was missing: it was the swelling and distension of her cheek which revealed this gap.
Elizabeth remembered how shocked she had been when she saw this injury in the ladies’ room, and how quickly and thoroughly she had suppressed the shock, but now remembered something else, another experience which she had suppressed, or which she had allowed events to suppress for her. She remembered kissing Katharine. She remembered how her tongue had found its way into that mouth; she had tasted gin and inhaled the intimate fume of cigarettes which she associated with her father. Elizabeth had probed Katharine’s teeth with her tongue. She had not especially meant to, but there seemed no other osculatory way to behave while their mouths were locked together. It was like making conversation. The top row of Katharine’s teeth really were very close to her top lip. Philip’s teeth were not, in fact, like that. She did not remember feeling them with her tongue or lips when they kissed, although there was actually the same tobacco smell. Was that what she was remembering? If she kissed Katharine now, Elizabeth thought, her tongue would feel that broken stump of a tooth, feel it as a flinty point or as something hollow, like a straw.
Elizabeth felt woozy. Her field of vision seemed to have a metallic shimmer or glitter that she could taste. She wondered if she should faint – pretend to faint, or really faint, and that would get her out of a jam. And yet the realisation that this might indeed be a good idea, seemed to cure her passing infirmity. She no longer felt in the slightest like fainting. An ingrained refusal to give in, a determination to buck up, stopped it happening. As for pretending to pass out, it was somehow utterly beyond her as well.
Noël gently repeated his offer about the Brown Bomber club, and Elizabeth numbly realised that a loud and sweeping acceptance, a ringing and comically imperious ‘Oh yes! Take me away from here!’ – the sort of line Margaret could probably deliver – would solve all her problems at once. But she just couldn’t do it. As if in a dream, she couldn’t speak. Having first assented, the momentum of what was happening seemed unstoppable. She smiled and shook her head at Coward, who graciously inclined his own in return, taking it on the chin.
After all, this man had a gun, didn’t he? Everyone knew, from films and suchlike, that when someone produced a gun you had to do what they said. Elizabeth, muddled, had quite forgotten about her conviction that he would be afraid to use the gun now.
There was something else, too. Elizabeth turned Noël Coward down because she was accustomed to declining, to refusing, gracefully shying away when members of the public asked her questions, or made approaches of any sort, and this instinct made her smile, and shake her head and look down. In any case, to reveal to these people, people with whom she had crassly attempted to mix socially, that she had put herself in this position – it was unthinkable. No, once they were out on the street, she would hail a cab. No, she would hail a policeman. She would hail a cab and a policeman. She would run away. Elizabeth could see Katharine talking to Ginnie, and Ginnie looking over to them, and then reaching for the telephone on one of the glass shelves behind the bar. She could feel a weakness and a sagging at the knees, and Mr Ware’s grip across her shoulders grew suddenly tighter.
‘Come on, now.’
They left the Club, out through the throng. Up the steps, through the trapdoor device and back up onto the streets of Soho. The cold air and the noise, the different sort of noise, made Elizabeth feel nauseous and faint. Now his grip on her elbow was powerfully strong. There were no cabs anywhere.
‘Let’s walk,’ said Mr Ware. He had lit another cigarette; this was clamped in the corner of his mouth, and he had adopted a ventriloquist’s way of talking, looking straight ahead, hardly moving his lips. What was the point? Nobody was looking at them. Elizabeth’s heart leapt as she saw a policeman approach: a big, cheerful, ruddy face under his helmet.
‘Evening to you both,’ he said pleasantly, with a slight West Country accent. ‘What are you in your kit for? Don’t you know there’s not a war on?’
All three laughed at his playful sally.
‘Oh, I’ve got some properties to inspect, chief. My work is never done.’
‘You’re a glutton for it!’
‘Certainly!’
‘And what about you, miss?’ he asked, easily. ‘Have you got to help?’
‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. Here was a policeman. Exactly what she wanted, and yet when she opened her mouth to speak, the words would not come.
‘Well, keep out of trouble. Good night all.’
He stalked off up northward, in the direction of Oxford Street. They walked on down Shaftesbury Avenue and into Piccadilly Circus: a young woman in uniform, still neatly turned out, and someone from the ARP, in his vivid white helmet and kitbag. They attracted attention here and there. People called out to them, but Mr Ware maintained his grip and Elizabeth could still feel the butt of his gun in her back. Two women walked past, gobbling fish and chips from a newspaper.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Come on. Just keep moving.’
‘I’m hungry. I’ve got to have some food, or I think I’m going to faint.’
‘Didn’t you have anything at the club?’
Passers-by probably thought they were sweethearts, or a married couple.
‘There wasn’t anything.’
Mr Ware and Elizabeth were now actually standing outside an Italian café.
‘I am going to faint. I haven’t eaten anything for hours. Not since lunch.’
Mr Ware looked at his watch, and then frowningly at Elizabeth.
‘All right. We’ll stop in here. You can have a sandwich and a cup of tea. Something like that. Ten minutes, maximum.’
A listless older woman and a young girl, so similar she had to be a granddaughter, stood behind the counter. Elizabeth sat at one of the tables, and looked around at the other customers. A young man, unshaven, dirty, hunched over a single cup of coffee. He did not look up. Another group of young men, with what appeared to be the remnants of facepaint and eye makeup gathered, giggling among themselves, at a further table.
What on earth was she going to do? Should she call the police? Yes, surely, that was what she must do. He wouldn’t dare use his gun now, in broa
d view of everyone. She should call the police, right now. Elizabeth imagined her thin, scared, cracked voice suddenly breaking the low, grumbling quiet. She imagined her desperate scream for help. Would these people help her? Would they recognise her? If they did, might it not actually lessen her chances of being helped? People would be astonished, unbelieving. They would not credit that it was up to them to protect their future Queen. They would not believe that someone of her class could possibly get herself into this situation. They might think it was some sort of stunt or hoax. Each of them, individually, would think that it was someone else’s responsibility to do something about it. Miserably, frantically, her thoughts running like a hamster on a wheel, Elizabeth realised how paralysed she felt.
Mr Ware was selecting sandwiches and a bun. The woman behind the counter was preparing a pot of tea for two.
What did he want her for? Elizabeth thought about this question for the first time, realised that she did not know and how scared this thought made her.
Mr Ware was putting the sandwiches, the bun and the tea onto a tray, and preparing to carry them over himself, apparently forestalling the woman’s suggestion that the young girl should do it.
Something about this whole situation was familiar to her. Quite aside from the danger and the squalor of the situation into which she had got herself so badly messed up, a long buried memory was beginning to stir. Could it be that she visited this café long ago, as a child? Or a café like this?
Mr Ware arrived at their table, his tray trembling and rattling with the weight. With a chink, he placed it heavily down.
‘Right. There you are.’
He sat down opposite her, sweating. His ARP helmet was now tipped back on his head, in a parody of rakishness.
‘I’ll be mother, shall I?’
He poured the tea, and shoved her sandwiches towards her.
‘There you are. Chicken. Very nice. Actually cost me more than I thought. But never mind. I’m going to be quids in, after tonight. You’re going to help.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Elizabeth finally got the question out, after much effort.
‘What are we going to do, you mean!’ he said smugly. ‘You and I are going to do some war work, my dear. The last bit of war work of the war. What do you think this is about?’ He tapped the helmet with a forefinger, and then lit another of his odd-shaped cigarettes.
‘What sort of war work?’ Elizabeth asked, now hoping to humour him.
‘Important war work. Vital war work. Home front work. Very important to the maintenance of civilian morale.’
‘Civilian morale?’
‘My morale, darling, my morale, and I’m a civilian. This work for the ARP has got me into some pretty dangerous situations, you know. Well, I don’t suppose you do know. Your sort just swan about, in no danger at all.’
‘That’s not true.’
Mr Ware’s manner reverted to his previous cold scorn.
‘Listen to me, Lil,’ he said. ‘People have died in this war. People got killed from Jerry’s bombs here: every night. It’s been bloody chaos. Bloody anarchy. Nightfall to sunup. Do you think we’ve all been fucking cheery Cockneys getting on with it and whistling while we work and keeping our peckers up? Well, we haven’t. The things I’ve seen while I’ve been seeing to bombed out houses. While I’ve been pulling dead bodies out of the dust. Women. Children. In that sort of situation, people don’t care. There’s no law and order.’
Now he took out the Luger and slammed it down on the table, while keeping the flat of his hand on the weapon, partially concealing it. No one else in the café looked up or showed the slightest interest. Furious rows between men and women were entirely commonplace here.
‘I’ve had to use this a couple of times, and not on Fritz. Had to. Do you think the police were going to help us, in London during the Blitz? We just had to police ourselves.’
‘What do you mean, use it?’
‘Are you getting cheeky?’
Mr Ware paused, removed his gun from the table, sipped his tea and nibbled the bun, keeping his bloodshot eyes warily and resentfully on Elizabeth.
‘People here have just had to help themselves as best they could. God helps those who help themselves, doesn’t he? And I’ve been helping myself. We all have. Those as could. Round here, some places got on the end of V-2s. Last one landed only recently. People are still clearing up the mess; the likes of me are clearing it up. D’you know what V-2s are?’
Elizabeth did, but didn’t speak.
‘It’s a type of Jerry rocket-bomb. I’m not surprised you don’t know anything about them. Do you know what the V stands for?’
Again, Elizabeth said nothing.
‘Well, let me tell you. Let me put you in the picture. The V stands for Vergeltungswaffe. I read that in the paper. Ver-gelt-ungs-waffe. It means revenge weapon. I can understand that. Revenge weapon. I’ve got one myself.’ He patted the Luger.
Suddenly Mr Ware’s thoughtful indignation gave way to the cunning grin that had been his default position all evening. He sat back, smirking at her, smoking the cigarette that made his pupils dilate and turned his eyes into two faintly irregular discs, like dirty threepenny bits.
Elizabeth rallied.
‘What on earth do you think is going to happen to you after this? Do you know who I am?’ she repeated.
He smiled, as if she was joking, or as if she was using her resemblance to a celebrated person, combined with her class superiority, in order to cow him. Did he realise who she was, or not?
‘Werll ...’ said Mr Ware expansively. ‘Your Royal Highness. You’ve gone slumming it in London’s streets. That club had some pretty nasty pieces of work in it. You saw some of your chums, I noticed. You ask them the things that go on. Make your hair curl. But you know it’s all basically just fun. Bit of horseplay. Nothing really bad happened, did it?’
Elizabeth thought about Katharine’s face: her broken tooth, and what it was like kissing her, before it was broken. The memory flashed in and out of her mind, like a glimpsed photograph in the turning pages of someone else’s magazine.
‘And William Ware, ARP officer, accompanied you to safety,’ he continued. ‘On your way home, you were able to help me with my war work. After this night’s over, you can just forget about it all. I thought you were supposed to be hungry, by the way.’
He smoked his cigarette again, and his pupils appeared to get darker and deeper. Elizabeth obediently tried to eat her chicken sandwich. She chewed the pieces of food, found there was no way of swallowing them, expelled them back into her paper napkin as discreetly as she could and took another sip of her tea.
‘I think I wish to be excused,’ she said at last.
Mr Ware simply frowned.
‘I wish to go to the lavatory.’
He grunted. ‘All right, then. There it is. Mind you’re not long.’
Elizabeth went round, past the café counter, and tried to catch the eye of the woman serving and the younger girl. Both resolutely looked away. They were closing up soon.
In the tiny lavatory, Elizabeth saw what she had been both hoping and dreading to find: a small open window. By hitching up her skirt and standing on one of the handbasins, she was able to look out. The window faced onto a tiny yard, with three big dustbins with lids just below. There appeared to be a passage leading away from the yard and round a corner. Where that led, she had no idea. Perhaps to freedom, perhaps to a brick wall.
She heard the bark of a dog, reasonably near.
Elizabeth pressed her hand to her forehead, as if taking her own temperature. She tensed her haunches, about to climb down, then changed her mind and stayed where she was. The dog had stopped barking. She could hear the hiss from the café’s tea urn. It was now or never.
She squeezed herself through the window, and found herself almost, but not quite, trapped around the waist. There was no way to straighten up and kneel or crouch on the sill: the window was hardly larger than a ship’s porthole. The mo
re she got herself through, the more emphatically she jack-knifed in the middle, with the crown of her head pointing almost directly down at the ground. After squirming and wriggling back, and finally retreating from the window-frame, she made another attempt, this time pushing her head and both hands through the enclosed space at once; she was now able to get palms, forearms and elbows out through the window-frame, her shoulders jammed against her ears. Again, she tilted downwards, her tummy flat on the sill underneath. With both hands, Elizabeth pressed on the brickwork beneath her; it was the only way to advance. There was no way to control her eventual landing. She would just have to push and push herself out, and when she began to topple, and gravity took over, the only thing to do was to stretch out her fingertips, and hope that her descent onto the dustbins would not be too loud or too painful. Would she break her arms? Would she break her neck? The hiss from the café now gave way to shouts in the kitchen. She had to get on with it.
Elizabeth pushed forwards, and dropped. Falling through the air seemed to take a microsecond longer than she thought, enough to register her skirts ballooning around her waist. And then, crash! Her palms entirely failed to lessen the blow of her forearms and skull against the metal discs and Elizabeth did an agonising and – she could still sense it – horrendously undignified forward roll, and landed on her back, into which the bin’s raised edge now dug excruciatingly.
She had never wanted anything in her life more than she wanted to cry – both to cry out, and to cry, to weep with pure pain and fear. Her head, back, arms and pelvis were in serious pain. Had she broken anything? No. She could move. She was all right. She relaxed. She almost luxuriated, absurdly, in this position, like a tailor’s dummy dropped from an aeroplane onto a semi-upturned dustbin. The dog had started barking again and she could hear raised voices from inside the café. There was no choice but to keep moving. Elizabeth got up and started to run to where she could see the passageway turning, then buckled slightly and almost fell with the renewed pain, and then rallied and kept moving, a continuous movement in which she appeared to crouch down and straighten in mid-gallop.
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