No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  ‘Be a bit more discreet about selling them. And when the rozzers come round about this afternoon’s little ruckus, spin them a yarn and keep me out of it. If you have to mention me, make me a concerned passer-by or something. A good Samaritan.’

  ‘I’ll give it a go,’ he said. He looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve already spun Uncle Manny a yarn. About putting out some feelers on your behalf. He was right browned off, but I’m sure he’ll keep his mouth shut.’ He paused. ‘The police’ll be easy. After all, why would robbers turn up at a jeweller’s?’ He gave a little laugh.

  A policeman was talking to a couple of people on the street when we emerged from the shop. A certain amount of hand waving accompanied a, doubtless, chaotic account of what had taken place, and one man was pointing emphatically towards Leather Lane.

  The policeman was absorbed in the taxing task of spelling ‘proceeding’ correctly and writing with a pencil blunt enough to require constant attention from his tongue. The others were staring off into the distance, presumably looking for the phantom car.

  None of them noticed us as we slipped – well, lumbered and limped – past.

  ‘Try not to bleed on the seat,’ Charlie said to Herbert. ‘The gaffer’ll give me hell.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I never was much of a bleeder,’ Herbert said.

  ‘Just a silly one,’ Charlie muttered under his breath.

  ‘How many people back at the house in Kennington?’ I asked casually.

  The Battler looked puzzled for a minute, then he realized what I was asking. ‘Just the one left,’ he said. ‘Don. Soft as butter. Good job the boy doesn’t know that or he’d have legged it by now.’

  It was worth a go. I could take Don. And, after all, I had promised Beverley Beaumont that I’d look out for Jon. He didn’t deserve it. He was a slimy little toe-rag. I wasn’t sure that she deserved it either, but a promise is a promise.

  ‘Look after your man here,’ I said to Charlie, ‘and don’t forget that Les wants you at his place later. I might see you at the party. I’ll get a cab from here.’

  ‘All right, Tone,’ Charlie said. He pointed at my torn trouser leg. ‘You’d best be off and change your suit.’

  I nodded and saw a taxi letting off a fare back on High Holborn and dashed for it.

  FOURTEEN

  The cabbie was decent sort who made no bones about making a brief recce south of the river, into enemy territory. He talked a lot though.

  And he threw question after question at me, over his left shoulder: What did I make of Sir Winston resigning? What about the dock strikes? What was up with the weather? What did I make of all these West Indians coming into the country?

  Fortunately, he wasn’t interested in what I had to say on any of these weighty matters. Which was just as well, as I had no worthwhile opinion about them. ‘The ’undreds of darkies’ crossing the Atlantic, apparently making the long journey for the sole purpose of taking the bread out of the mouths of poor cab drivers, seemed to have completely passed me by. Although, come to think of it, there was one rather well-spoken, well-dressed black man who’d moved into one of the streets close to Leyton Underground station. But he was from Africa.

  I asked the cabbie to drop me on the main road, just short of the turning to Florrie’s neat little house. I was perhaps a little too scrupulous about his tip, counting it out very carefully, but that was likely to prove less memorable than being either too stingy or flamboyantly generous. As I waited for him to turn around and drift back towards the centre of town on a cloud of filthy exhaust before making my way to the street corner, I reflected that a touch more insouciance wouldn’t have come amiss.

  The truth was that I didn’t feel very insouciant. My knee, my back and my head hurt; my best suit was ruined; I was hot and sweaty; I was tired from travelling all over London on pointless journeys; and, most of all, I was seriously hacked off with Jonathan bloody Harrison for heaping all this suffering on me.

  I made a conscious effort to calm down. I closed my eyes briefly and went where I often went when I needed something to cheer me up. I started with Sidney Bechet’s haunting 1938 recording of ‘Summertime’. By the time I was outside Florrie’s black front door, I was buoyed up by Sidney’s miraculous soprano sax on the New Orleans Feetwarmers’ 1932 record of ‘Shag’. Memory is a marvellous thing. And so is music.

  The Humber was still parked down the road, but there was no sign of the Morris Oxford. I rat-tatted on the door in time to Ernest Meyers’ blissful scat singing, reckoning that luck was on my side and that, if it wasn’t, I couldn’t think of a more joyous tune to be listening to when I found out.

  I didn’t mess about. When Florrie opened the door, still resplendent in her headscarf, her lips pursed in disapproval, I held the wagging finger of authority up and whispered, ‘Which room are they in? Front or back?’

  She looked perplexed.

  ‘Which room, Florrie?’ I repeated.

  ‘Back,’ she hissed. ‘Back bedroom.’

  I pushed my way past and, ignoring my various aches and pains, took the stairs two at a time.

  The door to what had to be the back bedroom was ajar, and I just charged in.

  Don was, unfortunately for him but happily for me, standing right behind it, listening, and it hit him very hard. He was staggering and a little dazed. I didn’t give him a chance to recover and just hit him once in the face. I didn’t catch him properly and felt a knuckle pop. Oh, well, what was another bruise among friends? Don was down and out of the action, though, lying beside the single bed. The New Orleans Feetwarmers had worked their magic yet again and brought me luck.

  Jonathan Harrison was not looking quite as urbane as he had the previous night. In fact, he was looking a little sorry for himself. He was loosely tied to a high-backed chair. He was unshaven, and there was some bruising on one of his cheeks and some dried blood around his mouth and nose.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘It’s the Seventh Cavalry.’

  ‘Mr Gérard,’ he said, ever polite, ‘thank goodness.’

  ‘Goodness,’ I said as I untied the women’s nylon stockings that held him to the chair, ‘has nothing to do with it.’ I think that my Mae West impression wasn’t as good as I liked to imagine. It didn’t even raise a hint of a smile.

  I nursed my hand while he stamped some circulation back into his legs.

  The curtains were drawn in the neat little room, and it was dark and airless, stuffy and quiet in a drowsy July sort of way. The only sound was a large bluebottle buzzing against the window, which added to the illusion that summer had come early.

  Don stirred and tried to sit up. I knelt down and grabbed him roughly by his tie, tightening it against his throat.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble from you,’ I said. ‘Just sit here quietly. Understand?’

  He nodded meekly, and I let him go. He leaned back against the bed.

  I turned to Jonathan Harrison. I’d decided I was fed up with forking out for taxis and travelling by underground, especially when there was a nice, comfortable Humber just a short walk away.

  ‘Can you drive?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘So who drove you to Cambridge and to my place?’

  ‘Rose,’ he said. ‘She was a driver during the war.’

  I thought about it for a minute and decided I didn’t want anyone else involved.

  ‘You,’ I said to Don, ‘are going to drive us back into town in the Humber, and then, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget all about where you took us.’

  I had Don drive us to Liverpool Street station. He could make what he would of that. I rather hoped that he (or Jenkins) would reckon that Jon had headed back to Cambridge.

  In fact, of course, Liverpool Street is not just a British Railways station; it is also on the Central Line, only a handful of stops from Leyton.

  The Humber was not as nice a ride as Les’s Rolls. But beggars can’t be choosers and all that, and it was every bit as comfortabl
e as the Wolseley. For someone who can’t drive and who wouldn’t be able to afford a car even if he could, I’d been in some very classy motors in the course of the one day.

  I did think about disabling the car by yanking out some crucial wires, if I could find any, but one look at Don’s reproachful face and I just didn’t have the heart for it.

  Instead, I told him to be a good boy and forget he’d ever seen me or I’d be back to haunt him. He didn’t quite raise a sneer, but he did manage a degree of sullen resentment that implied he didn’t think I could make good on the threat. On reflection, though, he might just have been worrying about how he was going to explain the loss of his captive to his employer. That wasn’t going to be an easy conversation for him. My heart strings remained untugged.

  I waited until he’d driven away before turning my attention to Jonathan Harrison. In my haste to get away from Florrie’s little house – I’d decided that, as I didn’t know when anyone was likely to be back to check on Jon, it would be wise to get away quickly – I hadn’t done more than tell Rose and Florrie that we were leaving. I hadn’t even given him a chance to clean himself up. In the glare of daylight he was looking decidedly the worse for wear, bruised and bloodied.

  I negotiated our way through the crowds waiting to board trains and took him into the cool quiet of the men’s toilet. It smelt strongly of disinfectant, but I suppose that was better than the alternative.

  The attendant looked askance at us. Conscious that my torn suit and Jon’s bashed face suggested we were a couple of street brawlers, I smiled at him warmly. He didn’t appear noticeably reassured and just turned away, back to cleaning one of the cubicles with his mop and dented, grey bucket of filthy water.

  I left Jon at one of the basins to wash and went to the urinal to pee.

  The great, long, stained trough gurgled into life as I stood there and water sluiced down, swirling the soggy fag-ends, used matches, Spangles wrappers and other assorted debris along to the clogged drain at the far end. I hoped it wasn’t too clogged. I really didn’t fancy seeing my own – even much diluted – pee washing over my shoes. Fortunately, the water stopped flowing just before it reached that point, though shredded tobacco and a green sweet wrapper I recognized did float past again, on the backwash.

  I heard the attendant banging about as he moved into the next cubicle and two people strode across the damp, stone floor, their footsteps echoing in the cathedral-like acoustic, to join me at the urinal before I finished.

  Of course, when I’d rebuttoned my fly and turned back to the basins, Jonathan Harrison, ungrateful little toe-rag of this and every other parish, had scarpered.

  I knew it was pointless, but I raced out into the station anyway. There were a couple of trains fired up and waiting to leave, steam gushing out from their wheels and billowing gently up to join the smut-laden black smoke roiling from their chimneys. And there were people everywhere – it was, after all, edging towards six – but not one of them was Jonathan Harrison.

  Somehow, I didn’t think that I was likely to see him in the French at seven either, in spite of the arrangement he’d made the previous evening. A more pressing engagement must have come up.

  I stood there, among the hundreds of people milling about, waiting for their trains to Seven Kings, Chadwell Heath and Shenfield, bereft without their evening papers, and decided that enough was enough. Even if he hadn’t quite reached the age of majority and couldn’t vote, he was certainly old enough to steal, lie and seduce his way through life. From now on, he could do it all without me. I’d fulfilled my promise to Beverley Beaumont. I’d tried to look out for him. My conscience was clear.

  Don was probably right. I almost certainly wouldn’t be back to haunt him. But I couldn’t help the nagging suspicion, gnawing away at me like a mouse in the wainscoting, that Jonathan Harrison would be back to haunt me.

  Jerry was looking incredibly fresh-faced and cheerful when I dropped in to ask him if he wanted to come to the party. I didn’t come straight out with it and ask him, as he, disconcertingly, adopted some odd postures. He kept jutting his chin out and grinning at me. It slowly dawned on me that he was posing. Then I realized why.

  ‘You’ve shaved off the goatee,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, going for a self-deprecating nonchalance and missing by a considerable distance. He did manage to look embarrassed and self-conscious though. ‘Ghislaine thought I’d look better without it.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘How is she? And where is she?’

  ‘She’s getting ready. And she’s fine. Great, actually,’ he said.

  ‘Getting ready for what?’ I said.

  ‘Maurice Chevalier is on at the Palace Theatre.’ He went for nonchalance again. ‘We thought we’d go.’

  ‘Maurice Chevalier?’ I said and raised a sceptical eyebrow. Jerry and Maurice Chevalier are not natural bedfellows. But then, he probably wasn’t looking to share his bed with the sophisticated boulevardier and chanteur.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s not much else on.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I guess not.’

  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘we’d better get our skates on, if we’re going to make it on time. Hurry her up, would you?’

  I clumped up the stairs.

  Ghislaine was looking as cheerful as Jerry and had dressed in an elegant blue cotton dress.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘Maurice Chevalier and Jerry?’

  ‘He is very sweet and good looking. He is what I need at the moment, Antoine.’

  ‘Maurice Chevalier?’ I said.

  She hit me on the shoulder.

  ‘Have fun,’ I said as she danced down to the corridor.

  Well, if a light-hearted dalliance was what she needed, I’d rather she had it with Jerry than me. Or Maurice Chevalier.

  The ungallant, but welcome, thought that I might be able to reclaim my bed cheered my aching bones. I remembered that I hadn’t called Reg, the football manager. Well, I didn’t much feel like playing on Saturday, but I did want to see Mrs Williams.

  The Fray Bentos steak pie that I’d found lurking in the larder and the tin of peas I’d warmed up to accompany it were sitting a bit heavily on my stomach as I walked towards the function room at the Savoy that Les had hired for his party.

  I didn’t know why Les had chosen the Savoy. As soon as I walked into the foyer, I felt out of place in my tired old grey suit. Les was fighting well above his weight here. It was way too posh for me, and for Hoxton Films. I wondered why he was going ahead with the party. What with Fleet Street being out on strike, he wasn’t going to benefit from widespread press coverage.

  The muted hubbub became considerably less muted as I walked along the dowdy corridor that led to the room I’d been directed to by the offhand and supercilious doorman when he’d finally agreed to recognize my existence. I nearly asked him what he’d done to earn all that braid, but decided to restrict myself to a jaunty, ‘Thank you, my good man,’ instead. It was just that touch more insulting and all the better for being subtle. I thought that the corridor was nowhere near opulent enough to justify the doorman’s sniffy attitude. But then I was feeling slightly aggrieved and looking for fault. The faded carpet and the dingy wallpaper made me feel better. So did the peerless Louis Armstrong leading the Hot Five in ‘Muskrat Ramble’, which resounded jauntily in my head and insisted on a brisk, springy stride.

  From the sound coming from the room I guessed that there was a good turnout.

  Charlie, looking considerably smarter than me in his dark suit, white shirt and tie, was at the door, carefully inspecting invitations and it was good to see a friendly face after the annoying bonehead at the front entrance.

  ‘Hello, Tone,’ he said. ‘You’ve probably missed the champagne. The boss didn’t order that much.’

  ‘That’s all right, Charlie,’ I said. ‘I’m not much of a one for champagne. How’s your mate? Herbert.’

  Charlie broke off to greet another couple of latecomers – a large, florid, s
elf-important man, who pushed past me impatiently, and his four-square wife, resplendent in her double string of pearls, who waited, rather graciously, for me to step aside and then acknowledged me with a friendly nod of her extravagant perm and a pencilled eyebrow raised in apology for her oafish husband. I smiled at her.

  ‘He’s all right,’ Charlie said after ushering the couple inside. ‘He had a lot worse in the ring. He wasn’t much of a fighter. Too big and slow.’ He paused. ‘Mind you, he was sweating and bleeding like a good ’un and the quack was suspicious. I don’t think he believed me when I told him that Herbert had caught his arm on some barbed wire.’ He sniffed. ‘Still, he didn’t call the rozzers,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’d better get in before they run out of those horses doovers. The boss didn’t order too many of those either.’

  ‘I’ll probably survive,’ I said, feeling a meaty burp build up somewhere behind my sternum and choking it back. ‘I’m not sure I’m dressed smart enough for this though.’

  He looked me up and down. ‘You’ll do,’ he said. ‘Everyone’ll think you’re a chippy or a soundman.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, feeling even shabbier than I had before. The grey suit really was a bit long in the tooth. I wondered if Maurie, the elderly tailor next door but one to Jerry’s record shop, might be able to repair the tear in my blue suit. I didn’t have high hopes and suspected that a trip to Foster Bros was very much on the cards. ‘And thanks for all your help this afternoon. I really appreciate it, Charlie.’

  I slipped quickly away before he could smack me on the shoulder – what is it with my friends and my shoulder? – with the punch that he was shaping up to deliver. I’d seen the damage he could do when he put his mind to it.

  There were a lot of dark-suited backs and a surprising number of elaborate-looking hairdos, all enveloped in a thick fug of blue-grey smoke. And there was braying laughter and high-pitched giggling rising above the general noise level. The crowd was like a single entity, rippling fluidly across the floor, giving off heat, noise and, it has to be admitted, smell.