‘Don’t try to sound sympathetic,’ I told her. ‘As I spun to a standstill the first thought I had was that you’d wished it on me for not being nicer to you. You’re a ruddy witch and, what’s more, a cow ate your sandwiches.’
After a pause she laughed. It was a low, gentle laugh of conspiracy that said everything. The sort of laugh that lovers share.
‘I love you, Charlie,’ she said.
‘I love you too.’
‘I know you do. Sometimes you fall in love with someone precisely because they love you.’
‘Does it matter who loved whom first? Which one of us?’
‘I don’t know; I keep changing my mind. All I know is that this is going to end in tears, and I am pretty powerless to do anything about it.’
I wished that I didn’t agree with her. ‘It’s like a card game,’ I told her. ‘Chase the Lady. Once the cards have been dealt to you, you have to play them out. Right to the very last hand. I’ll play them as well as I can.’
‘I know you will, Charlie.’ That six-beat pause I was used to, and then, ‘So will I.’ She said it so quietly that I almost missed it. There was nothing much left. I asked her to phone Piers and tell him that I would be late. I didn’t ask if she had his number, and she didn’t ask for it. The last thing she said was, ‘Bring me something back from London.’
The last thing I said was, ‘You can count on it.’ Then the pips told us to pay up or shut up. We put the phones down at the same time. I felt warm all over: wasn’t that odd?
Piers met me at the station. I hadn’t expected that. He had a dark blue jeep, and was wearing an RN Commander’s uniform. I hadn’t expected that, either. He drove right onto the platform and up to the train, and looked quite the thing. I flung my bag in the back. ‘You look very smart today, Piers. Where are we going?’
‘To a grubby consulting room in Battersea where we retain the services of a struck-off doctor. He’ll look at your ugly mug and see if there’s any permanent damage.’
‘I don’t need a doctor. I need a drink.’
‘You’ll see our doctor and like it. Piers takes care of his bods; surely you realize that by now?’
‘You didn’t take care of young Percy, did you?’ That was a bit cruel. ‘Nor either of my predecessors. Which one took the photographs, by the way? And what happened to him?’
Piers shook his head.
‘Peter Williamson. Pete. Sweet man. RAF Film Production Unit, until we borrowed him. As to what happened to him – I simply don’t know, old son. He dropped off the radar just before I heard that you were up for grabs. I’d like you to find out where he’s got to before you clock off, of course . . . if you can.’
The surgery looked a thousand years old; there were instruments in there that looked as if they’d been dreamed up by Michelangelo. So did the doc: stringy grey hair and a closely clipped grey beard, like a picture of Edward Longshanks from my school history textbook. He told me to rub a cut potato onto my chin and forehead, and take it easy for a day. Then he charged us thirty-five pounds.
‘Thirty-five quid for that is daylight robbery,’ Piers said.
‘Aye, laddie,’ replied the doctor. ‘Learn the first law of diagnostics.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Commence your examination by emptying the patient’s pockets.’
Comedians: all of them.
Piers didn’t like it, but he gave me the next day off. He was working to a deadline, he said, but we must have been inside it because he certainly wasn’t panicking. He left me to my own devices for the rest of the day as well.
I picked up a girl in Foyle’s Bookshop and took her to a pub near St Giles. I enjoyed her company because the meeting was never going to go anywhere. She had long wavy hair the colour of polished brass, and swigged her gin like a sailor.
I spent the night in the flat on my own. I didn’t know where the girls were or whether they expected me. Piers phoned to ask how I felt. He sounded as if he was drunk, and there were nightclub noises in the background. I could hear Noël Coward playing the piano, and singing ‘Dance Little Lady’. It was washed in and out by a static noise of chat and laughter, like a weak signal . . . but it still sounded like an epitaph for a lost generation, and it upset me. I read Eyeless in Gaza for a few hours, until a headache got the better of me, and then chose Dolly’s bed.
Don’t laugh, but next day I went to the zoo. The sun shone through broken clouds, and my head only ached now and again. The captive animals and birds looked hungry and listless – and there weren’t as many as I remembered from a visit before the war with my mum, dad and sister. In particular there was only one toucan now: where were all the others? Eaten during the hard times, or simply flown? They were still working to repair the bomb damage to the Clock Tower and the Giraffe House. The Ravens’ Cage looked smashed beyond redemption, and the east tunnel still had its ‘Bomb Shelter’ sign.
The pretty middle-class woman who I invited for a cup of tea at the terrace cafe turned out to be a war widow. She accompanied a stocky little girl of about three, and pressed her address and telephone number on me before we parted. Her desperate need for adult company cut into me like a knife, so I walked down Parkway to Camden High Street under my own cloud.
I found what we would now call a wine bar: it was a pub licensed to sell only wine – I hadn’t seen one of those before. In 1947 it was probably unique. I went two steps down from the street into a cool interior with a long bar and tiled floor. A big raised platform at the rear had long tables, benches like church pews and free newspapers. The sign on the wall over them said Silence, like in a library, and Men Only. Grace would have chucked something at that.
I didn’t know what to drink, but a friendly barman started me off with a cold white burgundy, and that seemed to do it for me. How had the French concealed it from the Germans? I drank three glasses of the thin lemony wine, remembered drinking it at pavement cafes in Paris in 1945, and read the papers.
Only the Daily Mirror told it the way it was. In the others the politicians were already jockeying for position, even though Mr Attlee’s government had only been in power a couple of years. The barman turned on a radio over the bar, and I noticed that it was an old air force tuner. That made me smile: there was that theme again – swords into ploughshares. A music programme was broadcasting a Glenn Miller Hour recording made by an American station before the war. ‘Serenade in Blue’: the trumpet solo on that still lifts the hairs at the back of my neck. I lingered over the Jane cartoon. The page was so creased that others must have done the same.
The following morning I dressed down and went out to meet Piers at a licensed cafe at Smithfield. I remembered it from years before. The Smithfield porters worked around the clock, and had somehow convinced the local licensing board that the nearest pubs and cafes needed to be able to serve booze twenty-four hours a day to keep up with them. I went back there on a nostalgic trip in the 1960s, and found that little had changed. We had steak sandwiches, and pints of stout that Piers insisted on calling ‘blackstrap’. He was still in his uniform, which now looked a bit rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved. He didn’t look like the best advertisement for the senior service.
‘What a night,’ he told me. ‘What a day and another night.’
‘You look as if you haven’t been home yet – or back to work.’
‘Correct, old son.’
I bit into my sandwich. The steak was exquisite. Its juices ran over my fingers.
‘What do you want me to do this time, Piers?’
‘Get that bloody woman away, of course. Apart from that, not much – though any more names you could put to faces before we lift them would be useful. Find out where young Peter went. Same as before: easy stuff.’
‘Lift them?’
‘Arrest them; toss them in the pokey. Then throw the key away. Bang.’
‘What for? They aren’t doing anything.’ A picture of the boy, Gary, formed unbidden in my mind. They’d taken his father already
; would they take his mother now?
‘For trespassing, and being very inconvenient to His Majesty’s government. And there’s bound to be deserters like you among them.’
He was just being a bastard, so I let it go.
‘There must be a hundred or so of them in the Bishop’s Avenue . . .’
‘No. Only the men, old son. Just the men. Don’t worry.’
‘What will happen to the women and children?’
‘Separated, I suppose. The kids will go to children’s homes and Borstals, and the women will be told they can have them back once they’ve found themselves somewhere of their own to live, and a legal means of supporting themselves. Neither of which will be readily available. It’s a hard old world. Barnado’s will probably get a bit of a boost.’
‘How will that help? Didn’t you say that there are thousands of them in London?’
‘Yes, but the Bishops Avenue is the jewel in their grubby little crown; if we take that back from them they’ll realize just how nasty the new world order is prepared to be: the others will panic, and disappear like . . . like . . . what is it the Tykes say?’
‘Snow off a dyke.’
‘Correct, old son.’
It was the second time that he had said that, and I had liked the satisfaction in his voice on neither occasion. Piers was a bastard, although I wasn’t sure whether he was a shallow nasty bastard or a deep nasty bastard. It wouldn’t matter to the kids banged into children’s homes without their mums and dads, would it?
‘Who’s we?’
‘Told you. You, me, Clem, the king, and all the other government wankers in bowler hats.’
‘Can I offer Grace a flying job?’
‘Affirmative. Pathfinder Bennet will take her on as a second pilot. He’s started a newish mob called British South American Airways, or something like that. It will keep your Grace gainfully employed, and thousands of miles away from England most of the time. Good result. I wish I’d thought of that.’
‘Did you speak to Bennet?’
‘No – out of my league. Grace’s Pa did the needful, but don’t tell her that.’
‘Thanks, Piers, I wouldn’t have worked that out by myself.’
‘Don’t be sarky, Charlie; it doesn’t suit you. Why are you looking so down in the mouth?’
‘What you just told me. This government is going to behave as badly as any that went before it. We are the Nazis now.’
Piers looked at me in astonishment. ‘Why on earth should you have thought otherwise, old boy?’
I looked away from him, concentrated on finishing my sandwich, and imagined him in a black uniform. It was not that difficult to do.
22. Limehouse Blues
Harry James looked genuinely pleased to see me. ‘Look what they gave me,’ he said, laughing. He always wore bits of suits that didn’t match; now he flipped his jacket open to reveal a sheriff’s star from a kid’s cowboy outfit, pinned to a pinstriped waistcoat.
‘John Wayne or Gary Cooper?’
‘I always feel I should be on Jesse James’s side. Probably something to do with my name.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you’d known him. He was probably a bit of a shit.’ I thought I’d better show some professional interest in our last encounter. ‘Did the cops come round looking for me?’
‘Just the once; after that they sat outside the gate in their car for a day. Young Gary used them for target practice with his catapult, and got a ticking-off. After that someone must have called them off. We can do without that sort of attention.’
‘Sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘I know it won’t. I won’t let it.’ It was as well to be told, I suppose. ‘Want a cuppa?’
‘Terrific. I brought some sugar and tea. Here.’ Bella would wonder where it was until she found my note.
The huge kitchen was full of light and happiness. I realized now how much I looked forward to coming here. One of the radios was on a high shelf, its thin copper-wire aerial stretching out of the window. Roy Fox and his band were giving it ‘We’ll all go riding on a rainbow’.
This was all going to be over in a few weeks. I kept reminding myself that these people were not my responsibility. I sat opposite Harry at one side of the long table. The radio switched to the Squadronaires doing ‘Something in the Air’. Damn. He didn’t have to remind me, did He? I already knew that, and wished that I didn’t.
Harry grinned, and held something out. ‘Your card. It’s official now, Comrade Miller. I’m really pleased for you, Charlie.’
Comrade Judas, more like. I produced some crumpled fivers I had lifted from Piers.
‘I’ve been thinking about that. I know that you said that money’s no problem . . .’
‘That’s right, Charlie – we have our sources.’
‘I still want to pay my own way around here if you’ll let me.’ There were six of the notes. I divided them into three pairs and pushed them over to him in sequence. ‘I thought that these should go into some political welfare fund – you would know what was best – and these would cover what I’ve eaten. The last ten will cover what I eat this trip and maybe kick-start one of your parties, if you had time.’ Thirty quid. Grimly appropriate, wasn’t it?
Harry put his hands down flat on either side of the money, and looked at it. When he made eye contact again I thought that he was about to cry.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, worried that I’d somehow upset him.
‘It’s nothing. You’re too good, that’s all. I don’t expect this sort of thing.’
The CP membership card was lying on the table too. I lifted one of his hands, and put it down over the money. Then I put mine over the card. ‘Let’s just call it a fair exchange.’
In my room the first thing I noticed was a bunch of fresh flowers in a cracked vase on the small chest of drawers. The second thing I noticed was another drawing pinned to the wall – it was of a Lancaster bomber. It was trailing smoke, and bombs fell from its open bomb-bay. A series of sharp dashes were the machine-gun bullets arcing away from the rear turret. The curtains were drawn, and there was someone in my bed. I was still throwing sixes: one after the other.
Grace lay across me, her face at my shoulder. Against my chest her nipples felt huge and hard. They always looked huge. They weren’t: her breasts were small, so it was all a matter of perspective. She said, ‘Look at me, Charlie . . .’
When I didn’t move she reached a hand up and turned my face towards hers. ‘Don’t worry about it. It happens to all men sometimes. You can’t be en garde all the time.’ I didn’t reply. ‘Look. It happens to us too. Do you think that women are always that desperate for a knee-trembler? The difference is that we can hide it when we’re not, whereas you can’t. A hole is always a hole, and I can always do what Mummy told me: lie back and think of Derbyshire.’
‘Don’t you mean England?’
‘No, I mean Derbyshire. It’s one of the few places that makes England worth being in.’
That was interesting. I smiled, but still didn’t have anything to add.
She kissed my shoulder and asked, ‘Still love me?’
I suppose that I didn’t answer quickly enough. ‘Of course I do. But it’s not enough, is it?’
‘No.’ Grace shook her head. Slowly. ‘I’m glad you’ve realized that. I love you a bit, too, but that’s not enough either.’
‘Someone else told me that about her marriage recently. She said that it wasn’t quite enough.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily mean that she’ll throw her lot in with you, either.’
‘That’s what I thought. But I can’t help hoping.’
When Grace spoke again she sounded sad. ‘You do that, Charlie. Never stop hoping.’ She slid off me, and lay on her back alongside. ‘If it helps, I love just two people, and one of them is you.’
‘But not enough?’
‘That’s right, love: not enough.’ She turned her back. ‘’Night, Charlie.’
I sl
id my arm under her neck. She moulded her back against my side.
‘ ’Night, Grace.’
Morning.
‘ ’Morning, Charlie.’
‘’Morning, Grace.’
Smiles all round. I realized that in all the time I had known Grace we hadn’t actually woken up in the same bed all that often. It wasn’t bad. It made me grin. ‘Darby and Joan’ was a phrase we used all the time in those days; you hardly ever hear it now. Grace said, ‘Go and take a bath. You smell sweaty, like a dog.’
‘And you don’t?’
‘Ladies don’t sweat; they glow. I was taught that at the school at Lausanne I was sent to – it didn’t do a bit of good. I was too far gone by the time they got hold of me. Go now.’
‘Join me?’
‘No.’ The definite negative.
I didn’t tell her that I liked to start the day with a bath or a shower anyway. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of being right.
In the kitchen Gary and his mother sat on either side of Matesy. It looked absolutely right. Matesy turned his brown eyes from me for a moment, and smiled. He knew it. So did the kid.
Gary said, ‘The cops came for you, Mister Charlie, but we didn’t tell them anything. Then I broke their car headlight with my catapult. Brilliant shot.’
‘Brilliant shot,’ Matesy confirmed. Gary smiled. His mother somehow laughed and frowned at the same time. Mothers can do that.
‘Don’t congratulate him, Daniel; it will only make him worse.’ Daniel.
‘They suspended him from school for a week,’ she told me, ‘and gave him work to do at home.’
‘And that’s punishment?’ I asked. ‘If I’d known that when I was his age, I would have been out with my catty every day.’
‘You’re as bad as Dan.’
Matesy said, ‘I was applauding the fact that Gary stands by his pals – that was all.’ It was uncanny; he had this huge, still presence. ‘Maybe attacking the coppers was going a mite far.’
‘A mite far,’ the woman echoed. It looked to me as if Gary had got his new dad. I was glad that I hadn’t queered the pitch for them.
The Forgotten War Page 30