‘Yeah, he would be proud of me, but he’d have your balls, love. Now then, don’t make excuses, don’t even try because it would embarrass me, and it would annoy Arnie. See, your fiddle’s been copped. It’s two in the till for the club and one in the pocket for you . . . Don’t interrupt, let me finish. Now then, you’re a good man behind the bar, and you got a good line with the customers. We are making a good profit so why don’t we say two and a quarter in the till, a quarter in yours, the rest to Arnie? That way the pair of you can watch out for each other.’
Arnie watched the guy hesitate, then realize he was on to a good thing. So it was a deal and, because he was getting a share of the profits, a straight share, he worked even harder.
‘Lock up for me will you, Arnie? I got ever such a headache.’
Arnie helped her on with her mink and said he’d have a taxi outside in a minute. Dora checked her appearance once more in the wall of mirrors, made sure her seams were straight, touched her hair in the familiar gesture and swanned out.
Edward looked around the place, impressed. New wallpaper, new curtains – not exactly elegant, but certainly a vast improvement.
‘I’m very impressed, place looks quite nice. You’ve been busy.’ He helped her off with her coat, noted the label, and tossed the mink to one side.
Dora walked straight through to the bedroom and began to take off her stockings, kicking her shoes across the room. ‘I got a maid comes in every day to keep the place tidy. I’m obsessed with everything being tidy. I got a place for everythin’, probably because all my life I hadda . . . had to share everythin’ with me sisters an’ brothers, not even me own bedroom. Now this is all mine, at least until the war’s over, anyway . . .’ She was trying to sound posh, trying very hard not to drop her aitches, and Edward was amused. She reminded him of himself not so long ago. He began to undress.
‘What you laughing at?’
He stripped off his shirt and tossed it on to the small, pale pink velvet chair, then pulled off his trousers and, stark-naked, walked over to an ashtray to finish off his cigarette. He blew out the smoke and then ground the cigarette into the pristine cut-glass ashtray.
‘I’m doin’ well, Eddie, really well. I’m stashing it away and I’m enjoying myself – life’s good, really good.’
He flipped back the clean silk sheets and got into bed while she slowly removed her underwear. He watched her as she wriggled sexily out of the black lace brassière, then her panties giving them a small twirl. ‘Figure’s good, ain’t it? Not bad for my age?’
Perfect legs, tight belly and big tits – she was lucky, they were well rounded so didn’t sag or droop. He watched her cream her face, sitting naked at the neat dressing table, first the cream, then the dabs of astringent, and each piece of cotton wool she used went into the small pink velvet waste bin. She checked her eyes in the mirror, the little lines, then took the stopper from a perfume bottle and dabbed her neck, elbows, behind the knees . . . admiring herself all the time. Then, ready, she turned with a smile.
Edward lay with his eyes closed, and she stood up, hands on her hips. ‘Bloody hell . . .’ Flipping off the lights she climbed in beside him, and he grabbed her, laughing. He wasn’t asleep – far from it – and he mounted her before she’d even pulled the sheet over her . . .
Dora drew her pink silk dressing gown closer around her and carried the coffee into the bedroom. ‘You’ll have ter get a move on, she’ll be ’ere – here any minute an’ I don’t want her finding you. You know the way maids talk.’
She stood at the bathroom door, watching him as he rifled through Johnny’s shaving gear and lathered his face. ‘You know, you really are the best. I’m not just saying it, I really mean it, an artist. You could make it your profession.’
She surveyed his body, sipped the thick black coffee and reminded herself not to use too many beans in the American coffee machine, a gift from one of her customers. ‘When will you come again, Eddie? Eddie . . .?’
He splashed cold water on his face, walked past her into the bedroom and began to dress.
‘Eddie, you hear me, when are you coming back? You don’t really give a tinker’s cuss about me, do you? You know, I thought you did, last night? What did you need, a room for the night? Eddie, you deaf? Why don’t you answer me?’
Slipping into his fresh shirt he started doing up the small pearl buttons. ‘Because I don’t like to be called “Eddieeee . . . Eddieee.”
‘Oh, all right, then, Stud, is that a better name?’ Furious with him, she opened her handbag and took out two folded tenners, chucked them on to the bed. ‘You got a posh voice, Eddie, you got all the right gear. You got the lighter an’ cigarette case, but that don’t make you any different from me. You’re goin’ through one school, an’ I’m goin’ through another, but we’re the same.’
He was putting his coat on, going to walk out on her. She blazed. Nobody walked out on her, she was somebody now. She certainly wasn’t going to take it from a kid from her own backstreet slum. She hurled a pot of cream at his head, but she missed and it spattered over her new wallpaper.
Dressed to perfection, his coat on, Edward snapped his overnight case shut. Then he gave her his smile, and she wanted to cry. ‘Damn you, Eddie Stubbs, damn you.’
Picking up a handkerchief from the dressing table she blew her nose.
‘I earn good money, Eddie, and with Johnny away you could stay here, stay with me. I know how to handle the punters, I could really make it . . . You like me, don’t you?’
He looked around her bedroom, picked up his case.
‘This isn’t for me, sweetheart, and nor are you . . . Thanks anyway.’
She followed him through into the small hallway with the pink rose-patterned carpet. ‘Will I see you again, then?’
He opened the door, gave her a wink and said, ‘Sure,’ then he was gone. When she went back into the bedroom she noticed that he had taken her twenty quid, and then she saw the cream dripping down the new wallpaper. ‘Me wallpaper, look at me bloody wallpaper.’
Evelyne Stubbs’ solicitors were taken aback when the smart young man presented himself as her son. He apologized, and said he had intended calling to see them months ago, but due to his studies he had never been able to get to London on weekdays.
They reviewed Evelyne’s will in detail. Edward had hoped that the land his mother’s house had stood on would be of some value. The whole street had been bombed, and they were building prefab houses – in fact they had already rebuilt part of the street and were rehousing the homeless.
‘The land, really, is virtually worthless. Of course, that may not be the case after the war, but at present there are vacant plots of land all over London, in some places more land than houses.’
Edward took their advice to retain the plots until they were worth selling. He then asked about Evelyne’s money in the Post Office; it was a simple matter of the verification of his signature and the money was his. He stopped at the first Post Office he came to after leaving the solicitors’ office, and withdrew the 123 pounds in cash. The assistant asked if he wished to retain the old book, as there was still one pound, fifteen shillings and sixpence of accrued interest.
Edward chuckled, slipping the book into his pocket. ‘I think I’ll leave that in, for emergencies, thank you.’
After opening a bank account – his first – Edward made his way to the station and sat on the train, waiting for it to leave for Cambridge. He had hoped, of course, that his mother’s land would be worth a lot more. He recalled the days of Miss Freda and Ed, the Meadows family, and how hard his mother had saved and fought for them not to be evicted. What had it all been for? To end up as a worthless piece of wasteland. He gave no thought to Alex, beyond being relieved that the solicitors had not mentioned him. It did not occur to him that half the money he had just banked rightly belonged to Alex, or that half the property was also his. All he could think of was that now he could continue his studies, not exactly in the lap of luxury, but
with more than enough to see him through.
By the time he let himself into his rooms, Edward was quite cheerful. He had only just taken his overcoat off when there was a knock on the door. He recognized the light, nervous tap, and called for Walter to let himself in.
‘I’ve just been with the board again, it’s unbelievable. They’re sending me off to the War Office, to decipher bloody codes or something. I mean, how can they do it to me, smack in the middle of term?’
Edward commiserated. Poor, blind-as-a-bat Walter. He even offered to make the poor boy some cocoa, but Walter was so depressed he refused. Walter was nudging ahead of Edward in the tutorials, he was exceptionally clever . . .
‘You should take it as a compliment – only picking the chaps with specially high IQs. Never know, Walt, you may yet make a career for yourself in the Foreign Office.’
Walter picked at his spots, squinted and moaned that he was just completing an analysis of specimens down in the lab, he doubted if he’d be allowed to complete even that. Edward offered to take a look, and together they walked over to Downing Laboratory.
His hands stuffed in his pockets, Walter kept complaining until Edward patted him on the shoulder. ‘Think of it this way, you’ve got all the London cinemas – most of the pictures at the locals here are years out of date . . .’
Walter cheered visibly, and began talking about the possibility of working with microfilm. He lost Edward in the technical pros and cons of film-making.
But Edward was anything but lost when he read the results of Walter’s research – it was too interesting. They sat in the library, discussing Walter’s tests, then together they went over to the chemical laboratories.
Walter had drawn maps and detailed diagrams of many of the famous mines of South Africa. His tiny, meticulous print was difficult for Edward to read.
‘What I’ve done is to take all the famous mines and break them down into scales – where the strikes occurred, how they were discovered. This one, for example, is the De Veer mine, coming in at the west side angle – the west-end shaft was burnt out – check down the layers of basaltic rock, black shale, mela-phyre, and at eight hundred feet they hit quartzite. Smack in the middle you’ve got the different reef levels. Now, I reckon you should be able to tell the quality of the quartzite areas by the texture of the top basaltic rock – see? Look at the difference in quality – all those listed in Chart A, Chart B, have the same consistency. Now then, look at the mines that struck lucky, and look at the chemical formation of the top layer . . .’
They continued their talk until late that night. Walter was enthusiastic, excited. He believed he could, given the time, find some method of testing the top layer of rock and know, without have to spend millions on drills and pumps, just as they were able to test for oil, what areas were more likely to contain the precious minerals.
Edward asked if he could hold on to Walter’s precious papers and read them overnight. After hesitating for a moment, Walter agreed, and went off to pack his clothes. He was due to leave the following morning.
By dawn, Edward had copied all the notes. He congratulated Walter, saying he was certainly on to something, and he hoped they wouldn’t keep him away from college for too long.
Edward worked hard, taking Walter’s theories a step further, and was excited that he would have one hell of a paper for the end-of-term exams.
Chapter Nine
The prisoners were all gathered in the canteen for their dinner. The Governor called for silence. He had a speech prepared, but only got as far as telling the men that the war was officially over, Germany was taken and Hitler was dead, the long nightmare was over. The men cheered and shouted, and the rest of the speech was lost as the prisoners roared their approval.
The fact that the country was at long last at peace really meant very little to those serving sentences, but they celebrated along with the rest of England, the rest of the world. They filed into chapel and offered prayers for the dead, prayers for peace to be long lasting.
All across England the long-awaited peace gave rise to street parties and celebrations. Not everyone celebrated – peace would bring an end to the black-market racketeers, and night clubs folded overnight. Soldiers, sailors and airmen arrived home first to cheers and then disillusion as they tried to readjust to civilian life, to the fact that they had missed their children’s growth, their jobs were lost, in many cases their wives were gone, and mass unemployment loomed again.
Men trapped in the insulated world of the prisons were given film shows of the invasions, the signing of the peace treaty. Newsreels were shown, and the prisoners on their rows of hard-backed wooden chairs watched the screen with awe, which turned to horror when they saw footage of the liberation of Hitler’s concentration camps. Many hardened criminals wept at the appalling atrocities on the screen.
Alex lay on his bunk, still trapped in the nightmare of those starving millions, the skeletal shapes of men’s, women’s and children’s bodies being tipped into the anonymity of the mass graves. The haunting, pitiful faces were so remote, so unreal, that they hung over his head like a cloud, part of a terrible dream.
‘Alex, you think them films were real? I mean, really real? Like, I know some of us inside here have done things in their lives, like meself even, but, but no one could really do what we saw, could they? Starve all those people like animals, I mean, they didn’t even look human . . . were they?’
Alex sighed and turned over, looked at the big, bull-necked man who was so disturbed, so disbelieving . . . He was like a child. ‘Takes all kinds, George. It wasn’t just one man what done it, it’s a whole country. They must all be as bad as each other.’
George swung his legs down from his bunk. ‘You tellin’ me that ordinary people stood by and let it go on wivout doing nuffink? I mean, there was kids operated on wivout anyfing to put ’em out! Jesus, they wouldn’t even do that in the nick.’
Alex didn’t want to talk, he was as overwhelmed as George by what they had seen. He rolled over to face the wall, but George continued, ‘I get my hands on that bastard, on Hitler, I’d bleedin’ kill him, I would. I’d give him his own torture, then shove ’im in the gas chambers. I’d round up the Gerry bastards and gas the whole fuckin’ lot of them. Not one of them should be allowed to live, gas the bleedin’ lot.’
Alex told him quietly that if he did that he would be no better than the Germans.
‘I believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that’s in the Bible, that’s in the bleedin’ Bible.’
Alex was unable to get any peace with George banging around the cell, picking up his comic books and slapping them down again. ‘One million Jews die, so they should take one million Germans and wipe ’em off the face of the earth . . . I’d not leave one SS officer alive – not one of those cunts would survive – that’s what I’d do. For however many Jews was gassed, pay ’em back. What you say, Alex, never mind this trial. What they doing, anyway, givin’ them animals a trial? Fuckin’ hell – you and me know what a good lawyer can do, they’ll walk away, you watch ’em, walk away and . . .’ George Windsor, ‘Mister Tough’, ‘Mister No-Talk’, ‘Mister Stay-Off-My-Back’, broke down in tears, his square, muscular body shaking as he sobbed his heart out.
George was not the only man in the prison unable to face what had gone on outside, beyond their safe world, and it caused a mass outbreak of rioting and destruction. No more films were to be shown until the prisoners had settled back into their daily routines. But the films had another, more positive effect on many of the men. They all volunteered to work in the Red Cross department making blankets, to contribute in some small way. Jew-haters suddenly wanted to help Jewish prisoners.
George soon began to drive Alex nuts. He had to slink off to the library to read, and George even pursued him there.
‘You mind if I ask you somefing personal, Alex? It’s just that, well, I’ve been thinkin’ over some of the things what you told me, and, like, I got anovver year . . . Well, loo
k, Alex, will yer teach me ter read and write like what you do?’
Alex led him along the rows of books and found a children’s story book, took it back to his table. He was now a ‘trusty’, allowed in the library and able to borrow books at will.
‘I’ll work wiv yer in the gym, if you like. I was a trainer, see, a boxer, an’ there’s nothin’ I don’t know about the ’uman body – injuries, the lot, so it’d be a fair swap, all right, mate?’
So George began learning to read and write. He looked up to Alex as if he were some kind of hero, because of his superior intelligence.
At first Alex ignored George’s offer to help in the gym, but eventually he let George begin training him. His already large, six-foot-two-inch frame changed radically. His wide shoulders tapered down to a firm, tight waist, and he built up his legs and arms on the weights.
One day while George was barking out the time like a drill sergeant and Alex did press-ups, he stopped counting. ‘Alex, your name’s Stubbs, ain’t it? You related to a boxer, ex-champ?’
Alex picked up a towel and wiped his forehead. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Well, it’s the name, like, he was called Freedom Stubbs. Bit before my time, mind, but me old man, my dad, he was one of his sparrin’ partners down at this big country house. Always said he was one of the finest men he’d ever seen box, man was like lightning, with one hell of a reach. He was an enormous geezer, six foot four, used to wear his hair long like, yer know, he was a gyppo.’
The Talisman Page 24