Last Rights

by Barbara Nadel

  The tallest copper took our cards from the youngster and said, ‘Well, Miss, as a load of old cobblers goes, that’s probably about one of the best I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Oh, no, Officer, but it ain’t—’

  ‘Yes, it is, Miss,’ he said, ‘it’s tommyrot.’ Then he smiled. ‘In fact, it’s such a lot of you-know-what that if you are a Nazi spy I’m Benito Mussolini. Mr Hancock here, I must say, makes Funf look like a university professor.’

  ‘Uh . . .’

  He handed our cards back to us. I replaced mine in my wallet with shaking fingers.

  ‘A lot of East End girls come up here to earn a bit of bunce,’ the copper said, as he looked at Hannah gravely. ‘You all think it’s the bleeding Promised Land, west of Holborn. But it ain’t. There’s ’undreds of you and, darling, as I’m sure you know, you ain’t going to get any bloke any better than him. And you,’ he turned to me, ‘have some sense and knock her off down Rathbone Street, like the rest of your lot.’

  He was either local or he knew Canning Town well.

  ‘Now, you take these good people up to the Bayswater Road, Constable Barber,’ he said, to the youngster at his side, ‘and you make sure that they leave this park without having “relations” either near or far from this restricted area.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ the young man said, and then he turned towards us. ‘Come on, then, you two,’ he said, and started to walk on smartly in front of us. ‘Quick as you can.’

  As he followed on after us I heard the sergeant say, ‘Undertaker, he was. Christ, you’d think he’d have enough to do down that manor. If the docks cop it again tonight he’ll be glad I stopped him wasting his energy with her.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I’d heard that if you’d got money little had changed in the West End as regards clubs, dancing and drinking. Those who’ve always had it still do and probably always will. For those of us with rather less, however, a late night on the town with your best girl usually involves a pub. Hannah and I eventually fetched up in one on the corner of Sale Place and Star Street in that area of Paddington, behind Praed Street, they call Tyburnia. We hadn’t said a word since the young copper had chucked us out of the park and we didn’t speak again until I’d got myself a pint and Hannah a gin and It.

  ‘It’s me I’m more cross with rather than you,’ Hannah said eventually. ‘I should’ve brought you to your senses with your bleedin’ nun meeting some “person” in Hyde Park. Course it was ridiculous! All the parks have got anti-aircraft or allotments or—’

  ‘You said all the parks were given over to “courting”,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well, some of them are, in parts. Obviously not up by that bleedin’ river or whatever you call it.’ Disgruntled, Hannah lit up a fag and leaned back in her chair. ‘So what we gonna do now, then, H? We gonna try and get home and hope there ain’t a raid, or we staying here and doing what?’

  I shrugged, swigged my pint and began to roll up a fag for myself. The people around us were mainly squaddies home on leave and girls in Hannah’s line of business so it might, I knew, get a bit lively later on.

  Hannah sipped her gin, being careful not to get any of it on her lipstick. ‘I think you should stop running around after other people now,’ she said. ‘You done what you had to telling the police about Kevin Dooley. Now leave it.’

  ‘Aggie and Nan have said similar things,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and they’re right. Caused all sorts of complications. Not least of which between you and me,’ Hannah said, referring once again to what my investigations had led me to find out about her family. ‘Hyde Park! By the bleedin’ water!’

  ‘It’s a munitions dump,’ I said. ‘I remembered.’

  ‘Too bloody late!’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And it’s not as if that “holy Sister” of yours could meet this whoever at another time. That’s a restricted area, that is. No one in their right mind would arrange to meet someone there. Don’t make no sense . . .’

  Hannah let it trail off into nothing. Sometimes she rants and chatters and she knows she rants and chatters. But not this time.

  The noise had gone down a bit now because most of the squaddies had moved to the other side of the bar to watch a darts match. I smoked and drank and thought how stupid I’d been. This, what I’d been doing, wasn’t about Kevin Dooley. It hadn’t been about him for a while. It was about those bloody sisters! Not just one of them or each as a separate person, but the Reynolds girls as a whole and what had happened in their lives had taken over, taken me over. It – they – were so strange. It was as if, certainly in the case of Ruby and Amber, they’d set out to get themselves into places they thought they should belong – even if, in both cases, they actually didn’t. Ruby hid herself away among people she could only guess were her own, and Amber was the strangest nun I’d ever met. There was nothing religious about her. She just wasn’t right. Pearl, too, had put up with all sorts from Kevin, as far as I could see, just to keep a roof over her head, but that’s not unusual down our way. I wondered what Opal’s problem was or even if she had one. If her adoption had been organised by Blatt in the belief that he was her father she probably had a very nice life, thank you. Opal, the spoiled child, her mother’s favourite – very privileged compared to her sisters, in all but one respect. Opal, and she alone, had been in the flat when Victorine had killed Neilson and, asleep at the time or not, it had to have had some sort of effect upon the poor girl.

  An old biddy, I think maybe the landlord’s wife, sat down at the joanna in the corner and started playing something I think was an old Irish tune. Away a bit from the darts match, she was joined by one old boy who danced a slow, stiff jig. It was getting late now and some people were, as they do, starting to feel as if they could relax this evening. I wasn’t one of them. I know war doesn’t run on any timetable. I know that in reality there are no rules at all. Take what you know and turn it upside-down and maybe you might get a little bit closer to the truth. That’s what Ken used to say about the news we got at the front in the first lot. It was designed to make us think the things the generals wanted us to think, not necessarily what was the truth. Propaganda, they called it. And that was when I, too, started to think that maybe I should question what had happened all those years ago in the flat on Praed Street. After all, propaganda, mis-direction, whatever you choose to call it, isn’t just the preserve of generals.

  ‘They, the Reynoldses, lived on Praed Street,’ I said, as I pulled Hannah after me through the darkened streets. ‘It was in their flat on Praed Street that Harold Neilson died.’

  Hannah didn’t answer because, poor girl, she was all done in by this time.

  ‘The girls, with the exception of little Opal, were out in Hyde Park when it happened. They came home, saw what had happened and Ruby, the eldest, went to get the police. That’s what I was told and that’s what the jury must have believed when Victorine went on trial. But can we be certain that’s how it really happened?’

  I always think that the sirens, when they first start up, sound like something living. Not any creature I know, but something with blood and feelings in a lot of pain. As it wailed its way up to full volume, I said to Hannah, ‘It’s all right, you can go into Paddington, down the tube.’

  ‘Do they use it as a shelter here, then?’ Hannah asked.

  But I didn’t know so I kept quiet. Running now, on to Praed Street, where the great terminus and its station for the underground are, we followed a mass of other folk with similar ideas, who’d suddenly appeared from the doors of their flats and houses. Directly in front of us a woman, a baby in her arms, a toddler being dragged by his hand after her said, ‘For Gawd’s sake, do come on, Derek!’ The poor kid began to cry, adding to the noise that always explodes just before a raid: the sirens, people’s voices raised in panic, feet moving quickly over the pavement, crying and shouting, the clanking of metal teacups and other comforts against gas-mask boxes.

  ‘Derek!’

>   Hannah bent down and scooped up the youngster off the ground. ‘You look after your baby – I’ll bring him,’ she said to the mother, who nodded, probably with relief as much as fear.

  When we got to the entrance to the station, I turned to Hannah and was about to speak. But she got in first: ‘I s’pose you’re going out for a run now, aren’t you?’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Derek!’ the mother cried yet again, alarmed that Hannah, Derek and I had stopped.

  ‘We’re coming, keep your hair on!’ Hannah called over to her. Then, looking back at me, she said, ‘Just keep yourself safe. Whatever you’re thinking about what’s happened and who’s done which to what, it can wait.’

  And then she was off, striding forward like a youngster, Derek still grizzling gently in her arms. As I pushed my way out into the street again, I wished that I’d kissed her, just in case anything happened. But I hadn’t. Praed Street, it seemed, was emptying itself into the station now, hundreds of pairs of eyes passing me in the opposite direction, eyes that looked at me as if I were mad. The noise starting just softly in my head only proved them correct. Only nutters move about in the open in a raid.

  As I ran across the road towards the shops with flats above them opposite the station I considered the questions that had been forming in my mind since we’d been in the pub. What if the Reynolds girls hadn’t been out by the Serpentine the night Neilson died? What if they’d been at number 125 Praed Street instead? And what if whoever had telephoned Sister Teresa had known that, as well as the nun herself ?

  Turning what I knew on its head. But why not? It would certainly explain why the meeting hadn’t taken place and could never have taken place around the Serpentine. After all, if you want to make some sort of dodgy meeting with someone, you make sure it’s possible to do so first. The park hadn’t been possible. But a flat would be, provided you knew who owned it or could get in somehow. What that might mean, I didn’t know. Had Amber and the others seen what their mother had done that night? Did they even help her somehow? Was that, perhaps, the deeper secret they all guarded so zealously?

  I moved on towards the flats anyway, even though I couldn’t see anything beyond the black bulkiness of the flat roofs and chimneys against what was now a sky criss-crossed by searchlights. The Jerries would be here soon. The terror inside me babbled and screamed as I fought to concentrate on looking for Tony’s café. Not that I could see anything much. Once a raid starts, especially in our manor, the sky can light up like Guy Fawkes Night. But just before a raid it’s the blackest of blacks as can be imagined. I felt rather than remembered Hannah’s little torch in my pocket. Tony’s wife had told me they didn’t go down the shelter. They’d let me into the building, surely. Then we’d see who was in that old flat of the Reynolds family. Would it be the ‘smart lady’ Tony had told me about, or would a nun and an unknown man be in there instead?

  Totally without bearings, I didn’t know whether to move to left or right, so I plumped for one and went left. I turned the torch on a door as the first flash of light came from somewhere over in the east – the Jerries crucifying our manor again. Number 95. I ran to the right and kept going until I thought I might be in the right place: 129 – next to a barber’s shop. I’d overshot. I put my finger on the torch button and thought, To hell with bloody Jerry, as I swung the beam along the doorways until I got to what I knew was 125, right next to Tony’s café.

  I didn’t know Tony’s surname and so I just banged on the door shouting, ‘Tony!’ until he came.

  By this time, of course, Jerry was in full swing so when Tony did answer the door, in complete blackness, the night was already humming with Nazi bombers.

  ‘Who is it?’ the Italian said. ‘What do you want?’

  I briefly shone my torch up into my face so that he could see me. ‘H-Hancock,’ I said. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘F-friend of L-L-Little Ruby,’ I said. ‘I’m – I’m an undertaker . . .’

  Somewhere over the back of Praed Street, Christ knew how near or far, a bomber dropped its load and the earth shook so violently it made me drop the torch on the ground.

  ‘Come in! Come in!’ Tony said, as he pulled me roughly inside. ‘Why you not in a shelter, Mister? What you doing here?’

  The hall was enclosed so Tony pushed the Bakelite switch on the wall, bathing the narrow passageway in a yellowish, almost orange light.

  ‘The – the – the R-R-Reynolds f-f-flat,’ I stuttered.

  He thought I’d become a gibbering idiot, I could see it in his face. When I’d met him before I hadn’t stuttered like this. But there’d been no action going on then.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The – the – the – Ruby’s old flat . . .’

  ‘Mr Berigliano?’

  The voice was female, educated, and came from somewhere near the top of the steep, brown, lino-covered stairway. Looking up, the Italian, frowning, said, ‘Miss Green, you not going down the Anderson?’

  ‘No. I’ve got company. One of my guests doesn’t like it down there.’

  A pair of high-heeled shoes was what I saw first, black and shiny, then a pair of elegantly shaped legs, which the owner moved with some grace.

  ‘I expect the East End will get it, as usual,’ she said. ‘Poor things.’

  ‘But there was a bomb over the back somewhere, Miss Green. Didn’t you hear it?’

  She was a slim young woman, probably in her late twenties, stylishly attired in a sharkskin suit. She looked, and talked, like one of those society girls you see in the London Illustrated News. Girls with thick hair and perfect skin who ‘come out’ at the beginning of the season all the upper crust seem to enjoy so much.

  ‘Yes, I heard it,’ she said, and then, smiling a perfect smile, she turned to me. ‘Hello.’

  I tried to speak, but nothing would come.

  ‘This gentleman know one of the poor girls used to live in your flat, Miss Green,’ Tony said. ‘You know, the ones I tell you about.’

  ‘Oh, really? How interesting!’ Her eyes, which were very dark brown, opened wide.

  ‘I don’t know what he do here in a raid,’ Tony said, and then, looking at me, he continued, ‘You OK, Mister?’

  ‘I – I . . .’

  ‘I think he wants to maybe speak to you about the flat,’ Tony said, and then he shrugged.

  The sound of anti-aircraft fire from one or more of the batteries across the city punched up into the death-filled sky.

  Miss Green’s red lips smiled. ‘Well, you can’t very well go out again in all this,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a couple of people over but if you’d like to come up for a cup of tea, I’m sure that would be fine. We all have to pull together, these days, don’t we?’

  ‘Th-thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ she said, then turned and began to walk back up the stairs, her shiny black hair, cut into a bob, sitting elegantly on her slender white neck. ‘Goodnight, Mr Berigliano.’

  ‘Goodnight, Miss Green.’

  Tony went back into his flat while I followed the woman upstairs. It seemed I had been wrong about finding anyone other than her and her friends. But I was still compelled to go and look anyway.

  ‘So you know someone connected to that terrible murder, do you?’ Miss Green said, as she stopped on the dingy landing and opened the door to her flat.

  ‘Y-yes,’ I said. ‘Ruby.’

  ‘Oh, one of the daughters of the murderess, I suppose.’

  ‘Y-yes.’

  ‘Come in.’

  I followed her into a very white hall – white walls, carpet, ceiling. Half-way down she turned sharply to the left into what was the kitchen saying, as she went, ‘The parlour is at the end on the right. Please go in, Mr Hancock. I’ll join you in a moment.’

  I thanked her and had started to do as she had asked when it occurred to me that she had used my name. How had she known it?

  I turned back briefly and found myself looking at a very familiar fac
e. And although I felt fear at the time, I knew that I was also relieved. You always feel like that when you’ve been proved right about something.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Sister Teresa whispered angrily, as she led me down the corridor towards where Miss Green had said the parlour was.

  ‘I could ask the same of you,’ I replied.

  She took me into a room lit by one dull gas lamp, then closed the door behind me.

  Although the lighting was old-fashioned, like our own at home, the furniture was something else. Very smart in blacks and whites, like the design of the Troxy Picture Palace in Limehouse. It’s called art deco, that style. I only know that because Aggie had a wireless of that design when she was married. That was expensive too.

  I didn’t sit down on any of the deep leather chairs. ‘I bet it wasn’t like this when your mother was here,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ In the silence between her denial and the sound of one or more fire crews over the back, I heard voices from the kitchen. It was only then that I realised I was speaking without stuttering in a raid. I didn’t know why then any more than I do now. Maybe it was because I had to. There were things I needed to know, reasons I wanted to understand.

  ‘I went over to the Serpentine earlier,’ I said, ‘but you weren’t there so I came here. Has he arrived yet, the bloke who phoned you?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have followed me.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I told you, I went to the park and then I came here, once I’d worked out what could’ve happened all those years ago. Because this was where he meant to meet you all along, wasn’t it, Sister? Because this was where you were when your father died, wasn’t it?’

  ‘You were only supposed to tell my Sisters in Christ if I didn’t come back!’ she snapped.