Her cheeks were burning.
‘I got a whole trunk of clothes here. Some of them are Phyllis’s but most of them I picked up…’
‘Don’t tell me. They’re from a shop that was closing down and you just happened to be there at the right time.’
‘Something like that, yeah.’
Charlie shifted several chairs and boxes, until he found a worn brown packing trunk with the initials E. H. Gloss, Eton printed in white ink across the top. He opened it and presented it to Jean as though he were offering her a treasure chest packed full of jewels.
‘I’ll give you a few minutes but we better get you and the others out before the car shows up,’ he said, lingering. ‘What are you going to do when this is finished?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When Phyllis and I are gone. Are you going back to your husband?’
She paused a moment.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You don’t think he loves you?’
‘I think he thinks he does. But as hard as it might be for you to believe, I don’t want to be married anymore.’
‘Not after all you’ve been through.’
‘I don’t see that simply because you’ve been through a lot together that it justifies sticking together forever. I can’t see a way to be happy with him. That’s all. What about you? Were there other women besides Phyllis?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Not really?’
‘I saw another girl for a while but nothing serious happened.’
‘And I presume you’re going to marry Phyllis?’
‘When the divorce comes through from your brother, yes.’
‘What if he doesn’t agree?’
‘He’ll have too. He knows Phyllis has too much on him. I know he’s your brother, but you know what he does is damn right disgusting. He could get in all kinds of trouble for doing the things he does.’
Jean did not want to contemplate the reality of what her brother did.
‘I’ll leave you to change,’ Charlie said, picking up the gun and replacing it in the silk bag.
‘When are you going?’
‘Newman’s car will be here shortly, so I need you to get Arthur and mother out of here soon. I’ll leave you a key on the stairs.’
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes tracing the line of Phyllis’s dress and then he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Jean stood still, feeling the cold surround her, aware that every muscle in her body was flooding with life. She felt a great sense of power in knowing what Phyllis and Charlie had planned. It rested upon her and her alone to rescue the child from such a terrible fate. What should happen to the child after, she did not know. At this moment, her feelings were almost entirely concerned with opening up as much possibility as she could. It made her feel her own freedom acutely. There was still Frank to deal with. He would undoubtedly make protestations of his love to her and he would argue that she was suffering from grief and that loss did funny things to people. But the loss she felt also gave her a clear sense of the choices before her. She could, if she chose to, remain married and have another go at being a mother, but this choice seemed so ridiculous when placed next to the sour pain of the last few months. The death of her child hurt her terribly but she would not be yoked by such grief.
She removed Phyllis’s dress and stood naked. After a moment she drew her arm up to her nose and smelt her skin, which had taken on a scent that was half her own and something new. Goose pimples began to appear across the tops of her arms and she turned to the packing trunk, rifling through the clothes until she found something she wanted to wear. It felt trivial, but when all this business was over with, one of the first things she wanted to do was go and buy some new clothes.
TWELVE
The hammer kept tugging at the left side of his jacket and no matter how much he adjusted it, the hammer would fall back against his chest so that he could feel the dull reverberation of his heart thudding through the metal. He kept pinching his thumbs to get the feeling back into them, but it was difficult because he felt giddy with anger and frustration. He looked around and tried to get his bearings. Phyllis was sitting next to him. The two of them were aboard a nearly empty carriage of a Northern Line train heading south towards the city. There were half a dozen other passengers dotted about including a couple of young men playing cards at the far end.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I have to meet someone at Kings Cross station and then we’ll fetch Jean,’ she whispered, looking at her watch which, Harry noticed, she had taken to wearing the face on the inside of her wrist.
‘Meet who? Is this another man you happen to be cavorting with?’ Harry said.
‘Harry if you’re going to be a child over this, I suggest you go back and see if your brother-in-law is all right.’
‘We shouldn’t have left him like that.’
‘We phoned the police. I’m sure they will be there by now.’
‘What if they killed him?’
Phyllis did not answer him.
‘What did you do with the hammer?’
Harry tapped the left side of his jacket.
‘You should get rid of it.’
‘Are you mad? For all I know every bastard on this train is after me.’
‘Of course, they’re not. You’re being paranoid.’
‘You’re the one whispering.’
She turned away from him. The train came to a stop half-way through the tunnel. Half a minute passed and neither of them said a thing. She glanced at her watch again.
‘Come on you stupid driver.’
Harry felt utterly worn out. It wouldn’t have bothered him if the train never moved again. He comforted himself with the thought that once he had his sister back, he could let Phyllis go. Looking at Phyllis’s distorted reflection in the window opposite his seat, he tried to convince himself that he had never desired her, but it was no good. There was still some pinching feeling in his stomach that she belonged to him.
‘How the hell did we end up in this mess?’ he said, finally.
‘I should have never married you.’
‘We both know that now.’
Harry could smell cigar smoke and looked down the carriage to where a spherical man had lit up.
‘What does he look like?’ Harry asked, picking at his nails.
‘I’m not doing this Harry,’ she said.
‘I don’t care. I just want to know.’
‘He is stocky and good looking.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Same age as you.’
‘Are you going to marry him?’
‘Yes. I want a divorce as quickly as possible. You’ll make it easy, won’t you?’
‘And you’ll want half my money too, I suppose?’
‘Just a little so Charlie and I can get started. I won’t be unreasonable. Don’t pick your nails.’
She placed a hand on his. Harry had expected it to be as cold as stone but it was warm and tender. He shifted his hands to his knees.
‘Reasonable? And what am I supposed to do?’
‘Live your life. I don’t know. Perhaps you should get a dog.’
‘A dog?’
She laughed a little and he smiled.
‘I don’t know. Michael and Joe seem to have found a way.’
‘I can’t really see myself being kept. I can’t believe you told my sister. God knows what she thinks of me.’
‘I think your sister has enough problems of her own to spend her time worrying about you.’
‘She’ll probably never speak to me again.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shown her the letters, but they made me angry.’
‘But why? You’re in love with somebody else. What does any of that past matter to you?’
‘It doesn’t mean I can’t be jealous. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t want things to be better betw
een us.’
Harry felt a pain growing in his lower back from the hard wooden seat. He moved his legs and arched his back and as he did the train began to move once more.
‘So you never loved Freddie?’
Harry almost choked. He could not imagine speaking such a sentiment openly and he could hardly believe that Phyllis had the gall to ask such a question.
‘I found him attractive and good company, but he was a little overwhelming. I shouldn’t have kept those letters. I realize that. But they made me feel better when you were ignoring me.’
The train began to move and after a few moments pulled into Camden Town where several people climbed aboard. A young couple sat directly opposite. They were giggling away and clearly drunk. The woman was tall and slender, a redhead and wearing an expensive looking cream blouse decorated with roses and other flowers. The man was dressed in a well-fitted suit. He held a dark grey trilby hat in his left hand that he tapped against his knee. The man and woman started laughing and whispering to one another. Harry turned his attention back and forth between the couple and the men playing cards and he felt a surge of jealously at how much fun everyone around him seemed to be having. Harry knew that this world of ordinary pleasure had never been open to him and never would. He wished there was a way to make things simpler in terms of his own feelings. Looking back at the couple, he could tell that they were both attractive. It felt as though much of his adult life had been crippled by a kind of double vision of desire in which he was constantly aware of the other possibilities his life could afford. On some level he reasoned he was no different from anyone else who made a choice to be with someone in particular but because his fancies were so varied, he became more aware of the limitations of those choices. He felt the disappointment more readily and more fully. Now it seemed that Phyllis was allowed to make a life for herself and yet he was to remain perpetually stuck.
Where Phyllis was concerned, Harry wanted the whole business to be over and done with. It would have suited him fine to have signed the divorce papers now so he could return home and drink himself into a stupor. He wondered if this would be the last time he would see Phyllis, and if so perhaps he should come clean and tell her everything about George, but then it wouldn’t really make a difference. There were certain things that could never be repaired and too many awkward feelings to disclose to Phyllis. Besides, now was not the time.
They reached Kings Cross and walked into the station. Phyllis kept glancing around and making Harry nervous. He felt everyone’s eyes on him.
‘He said he would be here,’ she said.
‘You still haven’t explained what we’re doing here.’
‘My contact.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘There are some people helping us. They are going to help Charlie and me get to the continent.’
‘Why are they helping you?’
‘Charlie and I have been giving them information on Newman and those other men who were chasing you.’
‘Are they the police?’
‘No.’
‘Intelligence?’
‘No. They just want Newman and his men off the streets.’
Harry took her by the shoulder and made her look at him.
‘Who are they then? Crooks too.’
Phyllis pulled away.
‘Harry, don’t worry about things that don’t concern you. They have been keeping an eye on me and Charlie. The police would have been no good over a thing like this.’
There was an announcement that a train from York had been delayed by ten minutes. Phyllis checked her watch again.
‘They usually wait,’ she said.
‘Perhaps it’s me. They don’t know me. I might have scared them off.’
‘They know about you.’
‘They do?’
‘The man at the theatre, you remember him? The one who came up to us. He was one of the contacts and a friend of the family who I was staying with.’
‘The spiv?’
‘He’s not a spiv. Not really.’
‘Just a minute, did you take my wallet?’
‘What?’
‘Did you steal my wallet at the theatre?’
‘No. I took the letters, but nothing else.’
‘I knew it. That friend of yours stole my wallet. It went missing that night. I assumed you’d taken it.’
‘I don’t think he would have done that,’ she said.
‘Find out. I bet they were checking up on me. You ask them.’
‘If you want,’ she said.
‘You know, I think you’re mad to trust these people.’
‘Well I don’t care what you think about it.’
At that moment Harry noticed Phyllis’s eyes fix on a middle-aged hound-faced man sitting on a bench a little way from him.
‘Wait here,’ she said and walked towards the man, who a moment later got up from his seat and started walking away from them.
Harry followed a little way behind, as Phyllis and the man started talking to one another. She nodded two or three times, listening intently to what he said to her and then she handed him a piece of paper and started to walk away from him. Harry continued to follow the man who was leaving the main entrance of the station. He wanted his wallet back and he presumed this man knew the fellow who had taken it. No longer would he be so easily disregarded, he thought, as he grabbed the man by the arm. The man immediately turned and took hold of Harry’s wrist and hand, pushing his little finger in a direction it wasn’t supposed to go. As he did so, he pushed Harry back against a nearby wall into the shadows.
‘Where’s my wallet?’ Harry said, wincing from the pain in his wrist.
‘Harry, stop it,’ Phyllis said, coming up to them both.
Harry raised his free hand and managed to clout the man on the side of the head, but the man struck Harry hard and sharp in the throat. Harry tried to speak but nothing came out.
‘Please, don’t hurt him,’ Phyllis shouted.
The man released his grip and Harry collapsed down against the wall.
‘I know nothing about your wallet, Mr Clarke,’ the man said, with a strong accent. ‘You should pay more attention to your belongings.’
The man turned and walked away.
‘What the hell are you doing, Harry?’
‘I’ve had enough of all this,’ Harry answered, struggling to get his breath back.
‘You’re lucky he didn’t kill you,’ she said, pulling him up by the hand and leading him back towards the underground entrance. ‘You realise he’s helping us.’
‘Helping you, you mean. He’s doing nothing to help me.’
‘Look Harry, you have to do what I say from now on.’
‘Just find my sister and then you and all your grubby friends can go to hell.’
They did not speak for a long while. They waited for several minutes on the platform until a train arrived and then Harry smoked while they headed east. When they emerged it was nearly dark and while the smog had eased for an hour or two, as night came, it grew thicker once more.
‘When we get to the house I want you to wait outside,’ she said.
‘Not a chance.’
‘Harry, don’t you dare make any trouble with Charlie.’
‘You’re asking a lot from me today.’
‘I know.’ She paused. ‘Is your hand all right?’
He looked down at it his right hand and his little finger. The knuckle joint at the base was badly swollen.
‘I’ll live,’ he said, but he felt empty as he said it.
He was entirely unsatisfied with himself and with everyone else for that matter. He felt overwhelmed by rage which, because of his inability to speak or communicate with anyone, remained unrealised and fed an ever growing desire for violence.
‘I promise you this will be over soon,’ she said. ‘I never meant to get you involved in all this.’
‘Did you ever want to be with m
e?’
‘I did, for a while. But even before you and Michael and those letters from Freddie, I sort of felt it was impossible.’
‘But you’ve always been in love with Charlie?’
‘He is committed to me.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘Yes, I love him.’
‘I was committed to you. I’d have been a bloody good father too.’
‘Yes, well.’
Harry was quiet again. He began to feel the heat from his broken finger spreading out through the palm of his hand. The thought that he would never be a father scared him. Over the last few months he had come to reassure himself that he was meant to have a child. Now he felt his loss greedily, nurturing his sorrow and allowing it grow. He felt his entire life had been one long grieving process for things that he had never had or felt a right to have.
‘You should have been honest with me about Charlie,’ he said.
‘I know. I was in the wrong. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you or Charlie. I am going away with him.’
‘Was I that terrible to live with?’
‘I could never sleep easily when you were in the bed. I always felt that those men you had slept with, Freddie especially, were somehow there with us. I believe you when you say there was nothing going on, but those letters were still in the house. And that blasted picture.’
‘But I took it down when you said it bothered you.’
‘Yes, but you put it in the wardrobe. It was still in the house. And it made me feel dirty thinking about it. How was I ever supposed to feel comfortable? I was always thinking, what if he does see someone else he likes? And how could I ever compete with a fella? There would be nothing I could say or do and even though you say you have always been committed to me, the very fact that you have wanted men, must make you aware that I’m just someone you chose to be with.’
‘Exactly. I chose you.’
‘But I want it to be certain. Don’t you see?’
‘There is no such thing. You think this Charlie isn’t capable of running off or changing his mind?’
‘No. I think he has only ever had eyes for me.’
‘Then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were.’
The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1) Page 20