Without the Moon

by Cathi Unsworth

  Greenaway nodded slowly, regarding the journalist with narrowed eyes through the veil of smoke from their cigarettes.

  “Well,” he said, “I have to commend the industry of the press. That’ll make a good scoop for you when he goes down. Your friends at the Ministry help you with that?”

  Ignoring the jibe, Swaffer pushed his annotations across the table. “These are the names and numbers of everyone I’ve spoken to so far. I’m sure they can be of further use to you.” He tapped the side of Greenaway’s empty glass. “Another?”

  “In a minute.” Greenaway folded the paper in his right hand and tucked it away in his pocket. He leant across the table, his voice a low rumble. “There’s a few other things I want to know before I go on drinking with you. First off, what’s Lady Daphne doing mixing with your snouts?”

  “Daphne Maitland?” said Swaffer. “But I told you. I sent her to Miss Moyes to help her through the trauma of losing her friend.”

  “What?” Greenaway looked incredulous. “They done a séance for her, did they?”

  Swaffer shook his head. “No, dear boy, you misunderstand. There are many other strands to Miss Moyes’s work and charity is the chief of them. Since the Blitz began she has been finding refuges for women and children made homeless, as well as providing clothes, food and comfort for them. It is a commitment that requires many kinds of skills, one of which is the production of pamphlets each week for publicity. Daphne knows how to write, and how to use a printing press. She is also very useful at helping to distribute these pamphlets and knowing into which hands to put them to achieve more funding. In helping others, she helps herself, do you see?”

  Greenaway looked slightly mollified by Swaffer’s speech, but he hadn’t finished yet. “What about the other one?” he said. “You know, the one that got me into trouble with the AC this morning? The one who goes all the way back to Dover Street.” He stared at Swaffer meaningfully. “How much do you know about her?”

  “You mean the Duchess, as she is known colloquially?” Swaffer said.

  “You don’t know her real name, then?”

  The journalist shrugged, a plume of ash dropping from his cigarette, “I don’t believe she has ever formally introduced herself. Again, Miss Moyes is the connection and this time it is with the esoteric that our shared interests lie. Which, of course, would be of no interest to you.”

  “I didn’t see her blonde friend at the arraignment,” said Greenaway. “What’s happened to her?”

  “I believe she has taken early retirement,” replied Swaffer, “in order to take up dressmaking. Which is one less for your Assistant Commissioner to worry about …”

  Greenaway began to rub at his temples. “All right,” he said. “Enough. Go and get me another pint.”

  18

  OH, LADY BE GOOD

  Tuesday, 17 February 1942

  Peggy Richards did not care to read the details of the fall of Singapore that spread across the front pages of the paper. She had already sat through Churchill’s speech about it on the wireless Sunday night, but only because her old man had wanted to listen. Where Peggy came from, the Prime Minister was not regarded in quite the same light as he was here, and the memories stirred by the sound of his portentous drone flickered like ghosts around the edges of her mind.

  “What’s up with you?” Charlie had asked her.

  Peggy looked around their room as if waking from a dream, no longer pleased with the Woolworths’ prints she’d arranged around the fireplace, the highly polished mirror or the vases of fake flowers she had ornamented the mantelpiece with. Now all she saw were the damp patches coming through the walls, the shabby, mismatched patchwork of cut-offs that made up the carpet. The laundry strung across the fire, shirt collars, string vests and baggy underpants drooping mournfully towards the grate were spectres of the time she had been living here, playing the housewife in a two-room flat in Deptford.

  She didn’t have the words to explain it to him, how this life she had been happy with for the past two years had all come crashing down on her last Saturday night, leaving her feeling rootless and alone, a restless shade of herself.

  “I don’t know,” she finally replied. “Maybe I’ve a touch of indigestion.”

  Charlie looked hard at her, his eyes narrowing for a second. “Hmmm,” he grunted through his teeth and the stem of his pipe, before retreating back behind his Sunday paper with a loud rustling of pages. Peggy felt the word “sorry” rising to her lips, but bit it back down. Hadn’t she learned anything? It was no good giving in to sentiment now. Look where it had got her before …

  Which was how she came to find herself now, on a tube train heading west through the remains of Tuesday night, her best possessions on her back, the bank book, ID card, ration book, coupons and purse in her handbag all she dared take with her.

  Someone had left behind a copy of the Daily Herald on her seat and she began to flick through it, mainly to avoid thinking than to actually learn more about Singapore or anything else to do with it. Until she came to a photograph of a woman – a marcel-waved blonde, looking over her shoulder and smiling out of a carefully lit studio pose. Peggy’s eyes moved across to the headline: MAN CHARGED WITH FOUR MURDERS.

  It had been a while since Peggy had last worked in the West End and, as she drank in the dreadful details of the story, a force of habit deeply ingrained within her made her cross herself. Which in turn made her think of her sister, Frances.

  Peggy folded the newspaper and put it back down on the seat, shaking her head to be rid of the vision of a door shutting in her face as the train rattled into Charing Cross. Stepping out onto the platform, she left Deptford Peggy Richards behind, the same way she had once shed a girl named Margaret McArthur on the shores of Donegal.

  The woman who snapped smartly up the concourse on her plum-coloured heels, fur coat swishing down to her ankles, red turban and matching lipstick, was known by other names in the cluster of pubs around Villiers Street and the Strand, and to the Beat Bobbies who patrolled the streets around them. She might have been Kitten Prine, Kitty Wordsworth, Peggy Time or Shelley Coleridge, depending on how her mood took her. But tonight she didn’t feel she fitted inside any of them either. Though she might have use of them shortly, her priority was to find some old pal who might help her get digs for the night.

  The Hero of Waterloo was the sort of place she would likely run into someone she knew. The noise that greeted her as she stepped inside the saloon bar came as a comfort: the raucous plinking of a piano and the roar of song and chatter through the cigarette smoke afforded her the perfect cover to lose herself. A couple of pink gins would make the transformation complete.

  As she ordered the first of them, she scanned the room, breaking down the mass of faces into individuals to be assessed for probabilities. Her eyes honed in on a woman standing along the counter from her, a redhead in a green suit, rabbit fur draped over her arm. The name Mina came back to Peggy, a woman of similar background to herself, although perhaps the three soldiers she was entertaining with her raucous laugh might have been introduced to someone different.

  Peggy watched them as the barman placed her drink on the mat before her and she handed him some coins. She had enough to keep herself going for a week or so, she judged, by which time she felt sure she would have sorted herself out with a place to live. Running into Mina seemed a good omen. Maybe she’d even have a room to spare herself, if the look of her suit, matching heels and freshly set hair was anything to go by. Raising her glass, Peggy caught the redhead’s eye over the tam o’shantered heads of the three servicemen.

  “Sláinte,” she said, holding up her glass.

  “Sláinte!” Mina’s green eyes lit up in recognition. “Peggy! It is you, isn’t it? By God, it’s been some time. Won’t you come and join us? Fellers,” she turned to her companions, “meet an old pal of mine.”

  Peggy shook hands first with fair-haired Frankie, then broad-shouldered Dennis and finally, swarthy Joe, who held on
to her hand a beat longer than the others, locking her into the gaze of his eyes, so dark as to look almost entirely black.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “you sure do remind me of a dame I used to know.” The aroma of an exotic, musky aftershave surrounded him. He had a hooked nose that looked as if it had been broken in a fight and the unruly curls that sprouted from under his cap all added to the sort of raffish appearance Peggy had always found hard to resist.

  But she hadn’t expected the accent. From the back, with their tartan caps, she had thought these men would belong to a Scottish regiment. But the word CANADA was stitched to the front of their battledress and, as Mina was quick to explain, this particular branch of the Cameron Highlanders came from a land of plenty.

  “You need any nylons, cigarettes, coupons,” she whispered into Peggy’s ear, “they’re your men. Don’t know how they come by such fortune, but your man Joe seems to be the wellspring of it. Looks like he’s taken a bit of a shine to you, eh?”

  Peggy nodded. “Actually, what I really could do with is a place to stay the night,” she said. “Would you be able to help me out there?”

  “’Course,” Mina nodded, “if you don’t mind giving me a hand with these first?”

  “For sure,” said Peggy, feeling the magic of the gin start to work.

  – . –

  A couple more drinks later and the landlord was ringing last orders.

  “Tell me, fair lady,” said Joe, “could you be persuaded to take a little promenade?”

  Peggy looked up from the rim of her glass. Since they’d found a table to settle down at, the room beyond her Highlander had become a little blurry, the lights sliding off bevelled panes behind the counter and flickering around the optics.

  “I believe I could do with a little air,” she said. She looked across at Mina, now sitting on Frankie’s lap. Dennis had fallen asleep, his head amongst the empties on the table.

  Mina winked, taking hold of Peggy’s hand and pulling her down to ear-level. “Let’s meet back at the tube in half an hour,” she whispered. “Should be time enough …”

  Outside in the night, Joe put his arm through Peggy’s. “Did you just tell your pal there you were looking for a place to stay?” he asked.

  “Well now, you have got sharp ears. But,” Peggy admitted, “I’ve no room of my own right now. Still, there are plenty of places around here …” She indicated the warren of little streets to their right, darkened doorways she had known well enough in the past.

  Joe laughed, flicking his torch beam around and then bringing it to rest on her face. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “This is no place for a lady. I have something a little better in mind for you.”

  “Oh?” Ludicrous visions of grand hotels swam into Peggy’s head, borne by Mina’s assertions of Joe’s black-market dealings. But the Highlander continued to lead her down the Strand until they turned towards the new Waterloo Bridge which, although it spanned the river, was still a work-in-progress, surrounded by scaffolding, cranes and a huddle of huts for the construction workers.

  Peggy stopped in her tracks, squinting into the darkness. “What?” she said. “You don’t mean that, surely?”

  “I got a pal who works here,” Joe explained, “one of the night watchmen. In exchange for this,” he pulled out a bottle from his jacket, “superior Canadian whisky, we’ll get the use of his suite for a while.”

  “You mean one of those huts?” said Peggy.

  He shrugged. “Better than a doorway, ain’t it? It’s OK,” he put his arm around her shoulder, ruffling the fur of her coat. “I know my way around the place. You’ll be safe with me.”

  But Peggy had stalled. The wind was coming up the river from the direction of the rooms she had left behind, bringing little stinging tears of sleet in its wake. She felt herself sobering up too fast. “You must be joking,” she said.

  “Well, how about this?” Joe went into another pocket, this time coming up with three pound notes. He shone his torch on them so she could see exactly how much he was offering. “Enough to keep you around for a while?”

  It was enough to call it a night afterwards and pay for a bed for the night, without Mina’s help. Peggy curled her hand over the notes.

  “There’ll be more of that,” he added, “after I see my pal the night watchman. C’mon. Let me show you the view. It’ll take your breath away.”

  She let him lead her onto the bridge. Sure enough he did seem to know his way, picking a route between the huts, his torch shining a pathway before their feet to avoid the potholes and planks, until they had broken the cover of the scaffolding and stood only feet from the parapet.

  “Now,” said Joe, looking out towards the river, “ain’t that something?”

  Peggy glanced about her, struggling to catch her breath. Above, the beams of searchlights moved across the clouds, criss-crossing the skyline behind the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. Below her, deep and dark, swirled the onwards rush of the Thames. It made her feel dizzy. Unbidden, an image of Frances blipped into her mind, Frances underneath Muckish mountain, standing in the burn with mud on her face saying: “You’ve not lost your sense of adventure, Margaret?”

  “Will you give me a ciggie?” she asked her Highlander.

  “Sure.” She heard the soft click of his lighter behind her. He put both arms around her, his left hand placing the cigarette between her lips.

  “Do you like the movies?” he said, his breath warm against her ear, the smell of him surrounding her. “You look so much like a film star, you know. Nina Oakley – that’s who you remind me of. Do you know who I mean?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Peggy, enjoying the warmth of him beside her. She thought that she might have heard that name before, but though she had spent most afternoons in the picture palaces of Deptford High Street, she couldn’t bring a face to mind.

  “Well,” said Joe, “you might not have caught her latest drama. It only came out last week. You know, I had the honour of meeting her once.” His left hand travelled down the length of Peggy’s coat and found its way inside.

  “Hadn’t you better be seeing about our suite?” said Peggy, smacking it away with a giggle, “before you get too carried away.”

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said. “We have a call sign, like they teach you in the army. Listen.” He turned, facing back towards the bridge, and cupped his hands around his mouth to make the hooting call of a barn owl. As the wind carried the sound away, Peggy strained to hear a reply.

  “Wait here a minute,” said Joe, “maybe he’s not in range.”

  Peggy tried to keep sight of him, but in the dark, with all the strange shapes made by the planks and metal poles around her, it was impossible. She turned back towards the river. “Nina Oakley,” she said to herself. “Where did I hear that name before?”

  It came to her in the same second that his fist connected with the underside of her jaw, in the same second that she turned to run. It flashed in front of her eyes before her head snapped back, in black-and-white newsprint:

  The second victim, Miss Evelyn Bettencourt, was also known by her stage name, Nina Oakley … A picture of a marcel-waved blonde looking over her shoulder and smiling out of a carefully lit studio pose …

  Peggy toppled sideways, glancing the edge of the parapet before she hit the floor. The pain had scarcely registered before he was on top of her, his legs straddling her torso, pulling her handbag away from her shoulder.

  “No!” she screamed, grabbing it back. “No, no, no, no, no!” Everything she had left in the world now was contained within those black leather dimensions and the thought of what it would mean to lose it overrode even the fiery rush of pain that came streaming down the side of her face.

  “Shut up, lady!” Joe yelled back, his voice rising octaves as he scrabbled to remove the straps from her fingers, pushing each digit backwards until the pain forced her to recoil. He threw the bag from her reach and leant forwards over her, pushing down onto her diaphragm so that
every struggle she made would rob her of breath.

  “I said shut up!” he hissed, his hands going over her mouth, pinching her nostrils shut. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be. Just be good, lady. Be good.”

  The world swam in front of Peggy’s eyes and she made one last attempt to throw him off. She heard a sickening crack and then the darkness rushed in.

  – . –

  Mina looked at her watch for the second time. It was gone midnight now, twenty minutes past the time she had agreed to meet here with Peggy. Maybe her friend had already found a place to spend the night, she thought, flashing her torch up and down Villiers Street, for there was no sign of her here.

  Another soldier, caught at the end of her beam, walked towards her, a hopeful expression on his face. Mina was too cold and too tired to wait any longer.

  “All right, dear?” she addressed her new punter. “Looking for a good time?”

  No doubt she would hear all about it in the pub tomorrow night.

  – . –

  Visions swam in front of Peggy’s eyes. Frances in her nurse’s uniform, staring at her with disapproving eyes. A baby wrapped in a white sheet, his eyes like the deep blue sea. The sea breaking against the white sands of an Atlantic shore, shrouded by a crest of blue mountains, in the far away haze of summer …

  She became aware of breathing, laboured and intense. There was something tight around her neck and something heavy, pinning her down against a cold, hard floor, so she realised that the breathing could not be her own. She couldn’t seem to move a muscle of her body either. Maybe she was already dead, being planted in the ground? Back into the Donegal earth …

  As the thought occurred, she heard the sound of footsteps running across boards, a man’s voice shouting: “Hello? Who’s there?”

  Abruptly, the weight was lifted from her. Breath streamed in through her open mouth with a piercing whistle and with it returned a rush of pain so intense she began to black out again, hovering between one world and the next as a pair of arms lifted her up from where she lay, pushing her against concrete, pushing her over the edge of the parapet. She opened her eyes and the dark swirl of the Thames rushed to greet her.