by Lizzie Lane
Chapter Twenty-Three
The atmosphere at number ten Kent Street the following morning was both strained and strange.
Although Lizzie had expected her father’s anger to continue, Harry’s intervention the night before had changed everything, especially once Stanley had told him the same things he’d told her.
‘You bastard!’
Henry Randall’s life as a soldier was far behind him, and although he tried to defend himself, Harry was younger and stronger. He was down on the floor in no time, his own son standing over him, glowering a warning.
‘Lay a hand on any of these when I’m not around,’ said Harry, sweeping his arm over the heads of his siblings, ‘and I’ll strangle you my fucking self!’
Daw had gasped to hear such language, but Lizzie and Stanley were accepting. They’d seen things their sister hadn’t, and with Daw it was a case of seeing is believing, besides which, she took her world for granted, everything in its place including her parents, siblings and sweetheart. Home truths were too much to bear. Sobbing fit to burst, she ran upstairs crying that they were all horrible and that they’d ruined her life, and that John mustn’t know, and neither must the neighbours. Nobody, nobody at all!
‘She’ll get over it,’ Lizzie said to a puzzled Harry. For him, the sorting out of this whole scenario was cut and dried, though he wanted to know where his mother was.
Lizzie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’ She hugged Stanley against her side and ruffled his hair.
‘Never mind,’ said Harry. ‘She’s got to be better off than she was here. And you,’ he said, addressing Stanley. ‘Will you be able to cope until we find our mother?’
‘Yes,’ said Stanley, his triumphant smile leaving Harry in no doubt that if he’d been big enough he would have beaten his father himself. ‘And you’re the boss here now, ain’t you, Harry?’
Harry nodded, his eyes sliding to where his father was deftly investigating cuts and bruises and trying to catch his breath following the punches Harry had jabbed at his stomach.
‘Right,’ said Harry, the look on his face leaving his father in no doubt that he would hit him again if he had to. ‘How far did you chase her?’
Henry winced, rubbed at his stomach then tentatively touched his bloodstained lip. ‘I don’t know. It was dark. Towards East Street maybe …’
Harry grabbed his father’s shoulder and dragged him to his feet. ‘Then get down the police station and report her missing. I’ll go out and search the streets. I’ve got a few friends that’ll help me – and take that look off your face,’ he added, a warning finger jabbed in front of the contempt that suddenly appeared on his father’s face. ‘I can see from your eyes that you’d love to be right about what I am; I bet you don’t sleep at night thinking about it. Well, I don’t care what you think, but I do care about my mother.’
Lizzie and Stanley had stood with their mouths open as Harry pushed his father to the door. ‘Get down to that police station. Report her missing. I’ll deal with the hospitals. Let’s hope we find her.’
Stanley’s eyes shone with hero worship. His brother was everything.
The police came round to the house later that night asking if they could have a photograph.
Lizzie made tea while Harry handed them a faded black-and-white from a day at the seaside a few years before. The whole street had got up a charabanc outing. All but Henry had gone along, and Mary Anne looked happy on it.
Henry, the blood washed from his cut lip, sat morose and silent, more dejected than Lizzie had ever seen him. In fact he looked as though he had shrunk overnight – thanks to Harry.
‘So what can the police do in such a situation?’ Harry asked, his hands shoved in his trouser pockets, his eyes fixed on the sergeant and constable sent by the local police station. He stood immediately in front of the fireplace, like a ringmaster at the circus, demanding a lot from those around him.
Lizzie found herself admiring her brother’s tenacity. He had a courteous way about him, a precise way of getting to the crux of the matter.
‘My mother must be out there somewhere. She can’t have vanished.’
The uniformed police sergeant mopped his forehead where the rim of his helmet had rubbed. He appeared to be gathering his thoughts and, once gathered, he addressed Henry, who he presumed was fretting over his wife’s disappearance.
‘Mr Randall, I sympathise and, rest assured, we will do our best to find your wife, but I feel obliged to state the facts as they are. Number one, accidents have increased tenfold since the blackout started. We’ve had more deaths from road accidents during the past three months than the previous two years put together.’
‘If that was the case, we would surely have found her in hospital or the morgue,’ said Harry.
Lizzie shivered and was glad an exhausted Stanley had cried himself to sleep, after telling her that he would be brave and was sure his mother was safe.
The police constable put his teacup back on the tray and got to his feet. ‘Not necessarily. We’ve had occasion of motorists picking up their victims and throwing them in the river to avoid detection. And I wouldn’t like to frighten you, sir, but there’s some pretty rum characters taking advantage of the blackout.’
Harry stayed out until the early hours looking for her. Lizzie lay on the settee, staring into the darkness, desperate to stay awake in case she was needed, in case the worst had happened. Being needed would mean consoling Stanley and smacking Daw’s face when she turned hysterical.
Her father had gone up to bed, but she knew he wasn’t sleeping. And neither should he, she thought, her anger concentrated on a single spot on the ceiling. She hadn’t been able to say goodnight to him, even to mop the blood from his broken lip. He’d had to do it himself. He’d looked at each of them in turn before going up the stairs, but no one acknowledged him, and the implications of it seemed to hit him hard. The strong man, who had regaled them over the years with brave tales of his time in the army, was now ignored by them, and for once there was pain in his eyes.
Even though she’d assured Harry she would stay awake until he got back, she started at the sound of his key in the front door.
The only light in the room came from a single candle she’d placed in the kitchen window. She’d read somewhere that in past wars women had placed candles in the window to guide their men home, and even though showing a light was breaching blackout laws, she didn’t care. Her mother was out there and so was her brother and she wanted them home.
Harry flung his hat and raincoat onto a chair. He smelled of rain and hair lotion and she loved it. He was the only man she knew who wore such an exotically smelling lotion. In her opinion, every man should wear a smell that masked stale cigarette smoke.
‘I like that lotion you’re wearing,’ she said, the words tumbling out and sounding stupid in the circumstances. ‘It hides things.’
Harry ran his hand through his hair, pushing its dampness away from his temples.
‘What?’ He sounded totally drained and his tiredness had aged him.
Lizzie couldn’t help herself. She rambled on. ‘Biddy Young should wear that lotion. It would mask the smell of her feet.’
She laughed, a hollow, nervous sound, swallowing it as quickly as it came and guiltily biting her lip. Laughing was out of place at such a time, a betrayal of her love and concern for her mother.
To her surprise she heard a muffled chuckle from Harry, or at least that’s what it seemed like at first, until she realised he’d choked back a sob.
Raising herself, she looked over the back of the settee. Harry had always seemed so sure of himself, so capable, but this upheaval in his home life had affected him just as badly as it had everyone else. There was little she could do to help. She felt pretty lousy herself. What could she do for him?
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
It sounded such a pathetic offer. Why was it always the first thing that came into people’s heads when dreadful things happened? Your cat�
�s run over, your boyfriend’s ran away with someone else, your mother might have fallen into the river; never mind, have a cup of tea.
Negative thoughts about feeling pathetic disappeared when Harry smiled.
He sniffed and cleared his throat. ‘I could do with one.’
She didn’t need to ask him if he’d had any luck. He would have told her if he had.
The flickering blue of the gas flame under the kettle was reflected in the kitchen window, outdoing the gleam of the candle.
Lizzie eyed the reflection, a shadow of herself surrounded by light. Beyond the immediate darkness she could make out the stark edges of the washhouse. She remembered the tin box, the cupboards of pledges, the record book her mother kept under lock and key. To the women of the street, her mother’s business had been more than a lifeline when times were hard. She could imagine them exchanging problems and asking advice on how best to sort out their children, their finances and their husbands. Unfortunately, Mary Anne had never managed to sort out her own marriage. Now when she looked back, Lizzie could see the tiny signs that should have warned her that her parents’ marriage was far from being wedded bliss. Perhaps in that dark outhouse she might get some clue. Following a few hours’ sleep she would go to work, but when she came home she would search out there for any sign of where she might have gone.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mary Anne was aware of a terrible shrieking noise that set her teeth on edge and roused her from the deepest slumber she’d ever had in her life.
‘Make it stop,’ she whispered, ‘make it stop.’
She felt a hand stroke her hair and a gentle voice soothed her fears. ‘Ssshh. It will stop soon. It is—’
Whoever was smoothing her hair had been about to tell her the source of the sound, and then thought better of it; either that or she’d fallen back into unconsciousness. She was glad, wanting to return to the wonderful dream she’d been having. Edward had come home; he laughed when she told him a telegram had come saying he was dead. ‘But I’m not,’ he laughed. ‘I’m here and I love you.’
For once her dream, one she’d had many times before, was not interrupted by reality. She was glad about that. She didn’t want reality any more. She’d arrived bleeding profusely and Michael had fetched a neighbour who knew about such things. The blood had reminded him of what had happened one night in Germany. That’s why he couldn’t sleep, but sat here watching her.
He couldn’t tell how long he watched her sleeping. She’d roused at the sound of the air raid siren, but then fallen back asleep. He hadn’t a clue of how much time had passed. They might both be dead now if there had been an air raid, but there hadn’t. Like many that had sounded since war was declared on 3rd September, nothing had happened, though he knew it would. He knew how ruthless those people could be.
Mrs Randall – he couldn’t think of her as Mary Anne, though he’d heard her called that – reminded him of Bronica. Even asleep she had the same way of holding her fingers close to her mouth as though she were about to suck her thumb, but sensually, her lips slightly parted.
Bronica too had been a heady mix of girlishness and pure seduction. He remembered watching her lying beside him, a light film of sweat covering her skin, made silver by the moonlight streaming through the window.
At first he’d feared sexual relations, but decided to lie, telling her he’d had an accident and certainly wasn’t Jewish but the son of a minister. Sons of Lutheran ministers could be trusted not to be pure-blooded Aryans.
He was about to join the army by then, proud to wear a proper uniform, the years of enviously watching Boy Scouts long behind him, as was his – mostly happy – years in the Hitler Youth.
It was through Bronica that he’d met Hans, a perfect example of what Aryan manhood should look like: blond hair, blue eyes and nearly six feet tall.
He couldn’t recall all the details of why they had all gone out together that night, but the events were ingrained in his memory.
Hans had been one of Ernst Roehm’s Brownshirts, but had been lucky enough to make a sideways move in time. He too had joined the army, but old habits die hard.
‘I know a very good bar along here,’ Hans had shouted, though they were already legless with laughter, beer and schnapps. ‘Along here,’ he’d shouted.
Bronica had been between them, purposely sashaying her behind, hitting first Hans’s hip, then Michael’s. The action was overtly sexual; Michael wondered, not without good reason, whether she’d slept with Hans, whether in fact she was still sleeping with him.
‘Hey, Hans,’ someone shouted.
A group of uniformed young men was gathered outside the Café Austria, boisterous and full of beer.
‘My old friends,’ Hans shouted back. ‘Old Brownshirt friends,’ he’d said, lowering his voice. ‘But all in the army and suchlike now, of course.’
Their voices were loud; that was the main thing Michael remembered about them, and they strutted around proudly like young lions marking their territory. Some of them looked good in uniform; some of them looked more suited to slinging butchered cattle around in meat markets.
Another beer had been pressed into his fist.
‘I think I’ve had enough,’ he said, shaking his head and desperately trying to make eye contact with Bronica. He wanted to go to bed with her, even if sex was out of the question because he was too drunk. He wanted to feel her body close to him.
‘Do you not welcome our companionship?’ asked a red-faced man with shoulders the size of a garden gate.
Michael had smiled and shook his head. ‘No offence intended, but I think I have drunk a whole barrel of beer to myself. I would not want to disgrace the uniform by being sick all over it.’
The refusal was frowned on. Other red faces joined the one glaring at him.
‘Is he a Jew?’ one of them said in a slurred voice. ‘Is that why he refuses our hospitality?’
‘Might be. Only one way to find out.’
They’d made a grab for his trousers. He heard no protest from Bronica or Hans as he was swept into the air, just raucous shouts, laughter and demands to ‘See what he’s got.’
His humiliation would have been complete once his mutilation was exposed, and even if he did get the chance to explain, they might not believe him, they might see it for what it was – one mutilation piled on another.
‘Look,’ one of them said suddenly. ‘Look.’
Whoever had shouted pointed to two men scurrying along in the shadows on the opposite side of the road.
Those about to yank Michael’s trousers off turned and followed the gaze of their comrade. Relieved, Michael fell to the ground. Like a pack of wild dogs, they were off across the road.
‘Come on,’ said Hans, jerking him to his feet. ‘You don’t want to miss this.’
Probably because he’d drunk too much and his legs were like strips of India rubber, Michael found himself pushed to the front.
The two men flattened themselves against a wall, their eyes wide with terror.
Pig-face – for this was what Michael called the man with the red face – jabbed at the man’s shoulder with the handle of a whip. ‘Sir, you address me as sir.’
The man licked his lips. Michael imagined the dryness of his mouth.
‘Home … sir … We are on our way home.’
Anticipating some bullying, Michael attempted to turn away. This was not the first violence he had witnessed since joining the army, and although he still adored wearing a uniform and having friends of his own age, his exhilaration was slightly tarnished. For the first time in his life he recognised the ring of truth in his stepfather’s words.
There was a choice. He could go along with them or he could intervene and end up lying in a pool of his own blood.
He preferred a third option. He could turn away go back to Bronica’s flat and pretend there was some glory in what was happening.
Hans’s hand landed on his shoulder. He shot him a warning look. ‘Come on, Michael
. Prove your loyalty to the Fuerher.’
Between the devil and the deep blue sea … something his mother had once said, though in what context he couldn’t quite remember.
Pig-face and his pals now surrounded the two men, one of who was braver than the other.
‘Look, we are law-abiding citizens going about our business.’
‘At this time of night?’
Pig-face adopted a disbelieving look.
‘What is your business,’ he asked, turning their lapels down, smoothing them with his thumbs, looking for ripped stitches.
Michael knew from this action that Pig-face suspected they were Jews who had torn off their yellow stars.
‘We are just workers,’ blurted the more frightened man. ‘We have just come from a meeting.’
‘A meeting?’
‘Communists,’ someone growled.
There was a sudden surge forwards.
‘Stop!’
Michael could barely believe the strength and volume of his own voice. Neither could he believe his own stupidity.
‘Let them go. They’re just workmen.’
‘Communist workmen,’ someone said.
‘And perhaps Jewish.’
‘Law-abiding workmen,’ said Michael.
‘Lying workmen,’ said Pig-face, ‘and I am certain I feel torn stitching in this fellow’s coat.’
The smile that swept over those observing the scene was full of guile; like a stage magician or a circus clown, he was playing to the crowd.
‘But I will not punish them if they confess. I think that is fair.’
There were groans of dismay, though some went along with him, their smirking lips at odds with the darker truths in their eyes.
The smell of fear had cleared his head. Michael watched warily, ready to flee if the need arose, regardless of whether they pursued him or not. As the alcohol diffused through his system, fear and an instinct to survive replaced courage.