by John Lawton
‘Roscolnick today!’
‘Really?’ Troy lied. ‘I hadn’t noticed. And to follow?’
Troy picked out the next most unpalatable item, and mentally placed a fiver on Nikolai opting for jellied halibut.
‘Oh . . . I think the jellied . . . sturgeon . . . no, no . . . the halibut. Yes, the jellied halibut.’
Troy would sooner eat snails.
‘You may pick the pudding.’
Anna Wolkoff set Russian tea in silver-cased glasses in front of them, and prepared to take their order.
‘We have not seen you in a while, Professor,’ she said.
‘War work, you know how it is,’ Nikolai said, coyly, and rattled off his order. ‘My nephew will choose the pudding.’
Anna paid attention to Troy for the first time.
‘Ah, your nephew the journalist?’
‘No, my nephew the Scotland Yard detective.’
Her head jerked up, she blinked. If there’d been a smile this remark would have wiped it from her face.
‘I’ll send a girl over when you’ve made your mind up,’ she said, and left without a second glance at Troy.
‘I do wish you wouldn’t just blurt out things like that,’ Troy said.
‘Why?’ Nikolai stirred honey into his tea. ‘You’re not ashamed to be the famous Scotland Yard detective, are you?’
‘No. I’m not ashamed. And I’m not famous either. It’s just . . .’
‘Just what?’
‘It’s a bit of a show-stopper.’
‘I didn’t see any heads turn. I saw no one pick up a bag marked “swag” and sneak out the back door.’
‘Well it got rid of her pretty sharpish.’
Nikolai shrugged this off – a gesture Troy himself had inherited.
‘Perhaps she has something to hide?’
Another waitress came and took Troy’s order for gurevskaya kasha, better known to former English public schoolboys as semolina pudding, but enlivened by the addition of nuts and cream.
Troy did what a good nephew should throughout the first course, and answered all his uncle’s questions about the family.
What was Rod up to?
Writing a book about his time in Germany.
His father’s disposition?
He and Churchill were still not speaking.
The mood of his mother?
Still taking everything too seriously.
The antics of his wayward sisters?
While the cat’s away . . .
‘And you, my boy? What of you? Always we talk of the others. But they are all of them married now. Only you left alone. Is there no one? A fine-looking boy like you, surely there is a girl?’
Troy looked at his fish rather than straight at his uncle. He would not answer this question if the old man shoved lighted matches under his fingernails.
‘I’m rather busy at work,’ he fenced.
‘Ah, so. Murder.’
‘If only. No . . . at the moment I’m rounding up German and Austrian nationals.’
Nikolai nodded, paused a little and asked, ‘Kornfeld. Arthur Kornfeld. Did you round up Kornfeld?’
‘No.’
‘Franz Neuberg?’
‘Yes. He was the first. Friend of yours?’
‘No, but doubtless we shall meet. I have been asked to review the internment of anyone who might be useful to the war effort.’
‘By our Military Intelligence?’
‘Naturally.’
‘You know it would make more sense if they’d asked you before they asked me to lock the poor buggers up.’
‘Well, my boy, you know what they say. Military Intelligence – the perfect oxymoron.’
‘Then we’re all doomed,’ said Troy.
As the prospect of jellied halibut sat before him, looking like something that had recently emerged from Moby Dick’s groin, he caught sight of Nikolai looking past him towards the staircase that wound up just to the left of the door into what he presumed was an over-the-shop flat. He looked in the mirror behind Nikolai and saw in reflection what his uncle saw directly, the frequency with which men were ushered up with a nod and a gesture from old Wolkoff, without any seeming contact with the rest of the restaurant. He had assumed on entry, as he always had, that the old Admiral guarded the door, and did so with a mixture of proprietorial majesty and plain nosiness. Now he realised that it was this second, inner door he guarded. Not this room but the room above. And his uncle’s remark began to seem more than casual, more than thrown out as banter. Perhaps Anna Wolkoff did have something to hide? He shifted his chair a little to show more of the rest of the room in the mirror, let his uncle’s chatter wash over him, and spotted two men by the fireplace, sipping Russian tea with obvious distaste and clutching English newspapers they only pretended to read. Like Nikolai they seemed more concerned with the comings and goings from the upstairs room.
Nikolai had finished the fish.
‘You haff hardly touched yours, my boy.’
Troy beckoned to the waitress for their bill.
‘Are you not staying for the kasha?’
‘No,’ said Troy softly. ‘And neither are you. You see those two blokes over by the fireplace. Coppers.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘I do. Not just coppers, but I’d bet a penny to a pound they’re Special Branch. You have only to look at the size of their feet. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but something’s going on here and you with your insatiable kitten’s curiosity could not resist taking a peek. Fine. I don’t know what you’ve heard, what tip-off you’ve received, but you’ve had your peek. We’re leaving before whatever it is is going to happen happens.’
‘Nonsense.’
Troy caught sight of a small boy in wire-rimmed glasses, ten or eleven years old, standing by the counter as he always seemed to be whenever Troy was in the café. He caught his eye and the boy came over. Troy cupped a silver sixpence in his hand, and let the boy catch a glimpse of it, before bunching his fingers around it, and saying softly, ‘Len – those two by the fireplace. Are they regulars?’
‘Nah. They was in yesterday as well, though. But I never seen ’em before yesterday.’
‘Do they order anything?’
‘Just tea, and they don’t seem to like that much. They keep looking at their watches like they was afraid of missing something. And they don’t seem to understand a word of Russian. Goes right over their ’eads. Even I understand “please” and “thank you”.’
Troy opened his fist and let the boy trouser the sixpence. Turned to Nikolai and said, ‘Now do you believe me?’
Nikolai knocked back the last of his tea, and muttered, ‘Spoilsport’.
They parted at the Cromwell Road where a set of steps descend from a traffic island into a tunnel, and thence to the Underground. It had been a delight since childhood for Troy to vanish in this way. Even at twenty-four it was a touch surreal to pop down a hole in the road like Alice after the white rabbit.
As the stairs emerged into the tunnel, hands grabbed Troy and banged him back against the wall with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. The hands that pinned him belonged to a man far bigger than he, but the face that loomed up was Steerforth’s.
‘What do you think you’re playing at?’
‘I’m sorry, sir . . .?’ Troy feigned.
‘Tea Rooms, laddie! What were you doing in the Tea Rooms?’
‘Having tea. Eating lunch.’
A blow to the solar plexus told him this was not the right answer.
‘Who’s the old man?’
As Troy had no breath to answer Steerforth yelled the question again – into his face.
‘My uncle.’
‘Why there? Why that caff? Why not any other caff?’
‘He’s Russian. He came over with my father. He’s a regular at the Tea Rooms.’
‘A regular?’
‘He goes there to drink Russian tea and speak Russian. That accounts for about ninety-nine per cent of their trade, I
should think.’
Another body-bending blow to the gut.
‘You are too fuckin’ clever by half. Did anybody ever tell you that?’
‘Frequently.’
Another hammer blow that took Troy to his knees.
People coming down the tunnel from the Museum end stopped. The Branch copper let Troy fall. Steerforth turned on his onlookers, blazing.
‘Police business. Move along! Now!’
And they did.
Troy was on the ground now – one more blow and he felt he’d puke. One kick to the belly and he did.
Steerforth knelt down next to him, a faux-avuncular tone in his voice.
‘Son, I’ve tried to tell you. You just don’t bloody listen. There’s copper business, and there’s Branch business. And you seem to get ’em mixed up. So you and your uncle fancied tea in a Russian caff. You just picked a caff I had under surveillance. You blundered onto my patch like a bull in a china shop. Do it again, and I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. D’ye understand laddie?’
‘Under surveillance?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you need to learn discretion, Mr Steerforth. Your men stick out like redwoods in the desert. Those two blokes by the fireplace might just as well wear signs saying “Copper”. If I spotted them, I’ll bet your target did too.’
Steerforth hauled off and hit Troy in the mouth with his fist.
‘You cocky little gobshite! This is your last warning! Stay off my patch!’
They left him there. On the floor of the tunnel. Puddled in his own vomit, a familiar reek of offal, a trickle of blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. A woman stopped, bent down to Troy and asked if he was alright. If it weren’t that she spoke in English Troy would have been prepared to swear it was the same woman who had approached him after his last punch-up with Steerforth.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he lied. ‘As soon as I get to my feet.’
And he’d no idea how long that would take.
She gave him her hanky. Women did that. He’d no idea why, but he’d soon have a collection of women’s handkerchiefs.
§ 87
‘You’ve got to report him this time.’
‘No.’
‘You can’t let him get away with this.’
Troy spat blood into the basin, felt Kitty’s fingertips run down his back, healing, soothing, provoking.
‘He won’t. You’re going to kill him for me. Remember?’
‘Ha, bloody, ha.’
§ 88
On the Sunday they had lumbered themselves. Lunch with the Stiltons. Dinner with the Troys.
Earlier in the week, the conversation had gone . . .
‘My mum wants to meet you. God knows why.’
‘What have you told her?’
‘I ain’t told her a thing. Not a sausage. It’s Dad.’
‘What does he say?’
‘How should I know? But it’s obvious, innit . . . we’re y’know . . . bound to be curious.’
They were in bed. Kitty slumped against him. His hand cupped around her left breast arousing a nipple.
‘We’re what?’
‘Don’t make me spell it out, Troy.’
‘We’re . . .’
‘Don’t you dare use that word! Don’t you dare!’
She squirmed to look him in the face.‘All the others is nicer.’
‘Of course. My mother is interested too. She asked if I’d care to bring my young lady to dinner on Sunday.’
‘Wot? Next Sunday? But I said we’d have dinner in Stepney.’
‘That’s fine . . . dinner in Stepney is surely in the middle of the day, whereas in Hampstead it’s never before eight in the evening.’
‘You don’t say?’
‘Are you sneering?’
‘Are you being snotty?’
§ 89
It seemed to Troy that he had been in countless East End rooms just like this over the last few weeks. At the same time nothing had been quite like Edna Stilton’s vast kitchen basement, with its constantly running coal-fired Aga, its table for a dozen or more and its constant stream of children and in-laws.
Mrs Stilton stared at the bruise on his face and seemed too embarrassed to ask. Walter said simply ‘You do seem to cop it, don’t you, lad?’
They were thirteen at table. He wasn’t superstitious, but he’d have difficulty keeping track.
Brothers Kevin and Trevor, two young naval ratings home on leave, who shook his hand heartily but thereafter seemed to communicate only with one another. Miss Greenlees, the lodger – bottle-thick spectacles and a job at Finsbury Town Hall. Sister Rose and her husband, Tom, from the Ministry of Works. Sister Vera, not yet twenty and already her mother’s rival for control of the kitchen – brother Terence, ‘Call me Tel’, the baby of the family, picked on by all who came before. And sister Reen and her husband, Maurice.
Troy had known Maurice Micklewhite before the war. He had thought him a wide boy. So many from Watney Market were, but Mo was clean as a whistle. Whatever it was he’d been up to he’d not been nicked. And he’d married a copper’s daughter. Hence, this no longer being Troy’s manor, he earned the benefit of what doubt there had been.
‘I’ve volunteered, Freddie. Only way to beat the call-up. I’ll be in the RAF in less than a fortnight.’
‘Flying?’
‘I hope so. What’s the RAF if you’re stuck on the ground twiddling a spanner or mashing tea? Not for me – I’ve asked to train as a pilot. I’ve twenty-twenty vision. They’re screaming for pilots. Can’t see ’em turning me down.’
Troy thought that class alone might be a reason the RAF would want Mo mashing tea rather than flying Spitfires, but he said nothing. Instead Maurice said it for him.
‘I know what you’re thinking. A cockney pilot. Accent like a pile o’ broken brick, and no ’andle-bar moustache. But them days is over. Just you wait and see, them days is over.’
Crude, but touching. Troy hoped he was right. Troy sincerely hoped he was right. His sister-in-law clearly didn’t think them days were over at all, and from the look on Edna Stilton’s face nor did she. Walter, Troy had concluded weeks ago, was a brick, a prince among coppers – neither impressed nor dismayed by the upper-crust accent that Troy did nothing to leaven. Others there were who reacted as though the vowels of received pronunciation spelt snob – or as Kitty had put it a day or two back, ‘snotty’.
Over rabbit pie . . .
‘Your dad borrowed a shotgun and bagged four out in Essex.’
. . . Mrs Stilton quizzed Troy . . . about his job . . . his prospects . . . his family . . . and while Troy answered honestly and thought that there was no other way but honestly, Mrs Stilton seemed to him to be flinching at every response, and all but reeling from his accent. No aspect of his world touched any part of hers.
‘So you ain’t really a Londoner, then?’
‘I don’t think so. In fact, I’m not sure what I am. It’s the kind of conversation I often find myself having with my brother.’
Uncertainty was not Mrs Stilton’s modus operandi, and it was what had geared his entire life from the day his father fled Russia.
‘I mean . . . I’m London born and bred. I was born in this house. My mum and dad bought this house straight off the builder in 1887. I lived here all me life. Till I married Walter there weren’t even anyone from another borough in the family that I knew of. We was all Stepney.’
Stepney to Troy was more cosmopolitan than it was to Mrs Stilton. He’d spent weeks rounding up Stepney-ites whose origins amounted to a sampling of most of Europe, and if his dad’s anecdotes were true, Joe Stalin himself had been one of Edna Stilton’s neighbours a few doors down in Jubilee Street before the last war.
He was being warned off. He knew it, she knew it . . . Troy wondered if Walter did.
Stilton had no questions. But then he knew the answers. At the end of the meal he lit up his pipe, popped the top button on his trousers and seemed content to play a
benign paterfamilias. Troy could not help feeling that he had been found wanting. Wrong part of London, wrong school, wrong accent, wrong origins, wrong man. And he could not help feeling that Kitty had not even noticed when her mother had slipped from questions into a busy, let’s-clear-away silence. No, them days were not over.
§ 90
Kitty said she could not eat another meal.
Troy said that was OK. He’d call his parents and postpone.
Kitty said, ‘Nah – let’s get it over with.’
‘It isn’t meant to be an ordeal, you know.’
‘You sayin’ dinner with my lot wasn’t?’
Troy said nothing.
‘’Cos I know what it’s like. I know what they’re like. Me mum’s always got a thousand questions, me dad’s watching his plate for the chance of seconds or watching my plate in the hope I’ll leave something – Tom and Rose can only talk about Tom’s job and Tom’s next promotion and Kev and Trev are wrapped up in a world made up of just the two of them.’
So – she had noticed after all. Troy deemed discretion to be the better part of valour.
‘I have twin sisters, you know.’
‘Fine. They can’t be as bad as my pair can they?’
But they could.
§ 91
It was not one of his father’s good days. And if his father was not having a good day, the family wasn’t having a good day. It was one of those days when he never got past the dressing-gown stage. A bee entered his bonnet at breakfast, usually over something he’d read in that morning’s paper, and shaving and dressing he went to the wall until he’d worked through it.
His mother looked at the bruise on Troy’s face and said nothing. His father did not notice. His uncle said, ‘Ach, I leave you alone for a day and look what happens.’
Dinner was a poor showing. The twins’ husbands were away in the armed forces, leaving them bored and restless. The only other guest was his Uncle Nikolai, seated next to his mother, and monopolised by her in French. Troy was seated next to his father as the one most likely to cope with his obsession if it ever found utterance, which left Kitty where he would not have put her, stranded between the sisters, Sasha and Masha. It left him craving Rod’s company, the decencies and certainties of Rod’s social code, but Rod was holed up writing his book on Berlin and Vienna and could not be tempted from it.