Small Change 03: Half A Crown

by Jo Walton

  “What does he do?” Carmichael asked, drinking his tea. “Smuggling?”

  “A bit of that, a bit of the bombing, anything with a risk to it. When I think of all the narrow escapes he’s had! But that’s why he might be useful now. He likes something with a bit of a dare to it.” Breda tutted. “But you might want something safer, and if you can hold on until next week, that could probably be arranged too.”

  “What’s your fellow’s name?” Carmichael asked.

  “He’s calling himself Jimmy, these days,” Breda said. “He’s staying here, though he’s out this morning. You could catch him early this evening if you came back. Come and have a bite of dinner before we open, and I’ll introduce the two of you. Maybe you can do business.”

  “Maybe we can, thank you, Breda.” Carmichael smiled at her, glad to feel positive.

  “We eat at five, because we open at six. I’ve got a nice bit of liver if you could fancy that. Or—”

  “Liver would be lovely,” Carmichael said. He wanted to tell her about Jack, about the pork chops that Jack had bought but would never cook, but he knew if he started to talk about Jack her sympathy would vanish to be replaced with horror and disgust. He applied himself to his tea, and just then a large group of men came in, joking and calling each other names.

  27

  It was Raymond who insisted I go to bed; I think my mother would have kept me up half the night telling her the highlights of my life history. Raymond was a very kind man, and no doubt this stood him in good stead as a publican. He seemed entirely sincere in finding my mother more beautiful than I was, though it would hardly have been unkind for a dispassionate eye to have described her as raddled. I had for years hated and resented him, without knowing him at all, for taking my mother away from my father and me. It was very hard to imagine, looking at him, how she could possibly have preferred him to my father, but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste. My father was a busy man, and Raymond obviously adored her. Now, after my father had been dead for years, it was easier to see it as a second marriage—they had married, according to that infallible source of gossip, my aunt Ciss.

  I was given the spare bedroom, and fell asleep under a striped bedspread, surrounded by hats—ghastly things with flowers and feathers—and wigs. I dreamed of missed trains, airships, lost cars, luggage, passports, and once, a lost child who was at once little Debbie Berman and myself, who was left behind on a platform as the train steamed inexorably away.

  I woke staring at a particularly awful hat, which seemed to have a whole magenta bird fixed to the side along with a bunch of artificial dog daisies. Sunlight streaming in through the window had woken me; it felt as if I had slept very late.

  I lay there for a little while, looking at the hat and thinking back over what had happened in the last couple of days and trying to work out what day it was. Eventually I realized it was Tuesday. I was supposed to be presented that very evening, to be formally introduced to the Queen and to society. Instead I was here. My life had been turned completely upside down and nothing made any sense. This was another one of those awful things that couldn’t be put right and one couldn’t get back before they happened. I wanted to. I wanted to be waking up on Saturday morning again, in my comfortable bedroom in the Maynards’. I wanted the Bermans to be safe in their home. I couldn’t bear to think of where they were instead.

  I sat up and combed my hair with the plastic brush the shop woman had given me. It was far more tangled than usual. I would have liked to have washed it but I didn’t know if there was any hot water. I didn’t know what time it was. They had kept my beautiful Swiss watch, just like they’d kept Betsy’s pearls. They were the criminals, really.

  There was a tentative knock at the door. “Come in,” I said, pulling the covers around me, in case it was Raymond.

  “It’s only me,” my mother said, putting her head around the door. She looked even more raddled in daylight than she had the night before. I swore I would grow old gracefully and never even think about dyeing my hair. “I thought maybe I should wake you, since it’s two o’clock and we’re just closing for the afternoon. Raymond thought you should have your sleep.”

  “Two o’clock!” I said. “I’ve only just this minute woken up.”

  “Well get dressed and come down and have a bit of breakfast, and tell us what’s going on,” she said, and thankfully went off and left me to dress.

  I put on the navy dress again. It remained remarkably uncrumpled, but no nicer. The white sweater was lost, left in the Bermans’ spare bedroom.

  The stairs led down to a friendly kitchen I vaguely remembered passing through the night before on the way to bed. The fire was burning brightly and a copper kettle was singing over it. I remembered the kettle from my childhood. My mother smiled and poured the boiling water into a brown teapot as I came in. “I remember that kettle,” I said.

  “It was my grandmother’s,” she said. “It’s one of the very few things I took. You must think I was awful, abandoning you like that, and you so small, but you don’t know what it was like. Raymond would have had you too, he wanted to, but your father was that fond of you.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I said, awkwardly, standing on the bottom step. “It hurt terribly at the time, but worse things have happened since.”

  I took another step down into the kitchen, and she handed me a cup of tea, in a proper cup and saucer with pink roses all over it, clearly her best china. I was touched. “It means a lot that you came to me, when you needed someone,” she said, not looking at me. “Raymond made me see that last night.”

  “I hope I haven’t brought trouble with me,” I said.

  “Well, you’d better tell us what you have brought. Raymond!” she called, raising her voice. “Come in here now!” She lowered her voice again. “He thought we ought to have a minute on our own, first, but I want him to know all about it. He might know what to do. He’s very clever, is Raymond.”

  “I can see he’s been good to you,” I said, sitting on the bench beside the kitchen table.

  “He thinks the sun shines out of my arse,” she said. “And to be honest with you, I think the same about him, though I’m not silly enough to let him know it. Always been that way, ever since we first met. I didn’t mean to trample all over you and your father, but I couldn’t let him go.”

  Raymond came in through the door from the bar. “Now, now, Irene, I thought you’d got that all out of the way,” he said, catching the last of this.

  “We have,” I assured him quickly.

  “Well,” he said, sitting down and taking a cup of tea my mother handed him. “Are you ready to tell us what all this is about? Your eyes were about ready to cross last night.”

  “I was exhausted,” I said. “Thank you for letting me sleep.”

  “I’ll make some sandwiches,” my mother said, getting up. “Go ahead, I can listen while I cut.” They had no servants, I realized. She had to do everything herself. Perhaps a woman came in once a week to clean, and no doubt people helped them in the bar, but otherwise all the work of the house fell on her. I thought I should offer to help, but I knew she would decline, so I sat where I was.

  I went through it all for them—meeting Sir Alan, the riot, Betsy, the proposal, the arrest, the rescue, the attack on the Bermans, the escape, and then coming to them. Partway through my mother put down a big plate of beef and mustard-and-cress sandwiches, the bread cut thickly and liberally buttered, and we munched our way through them as I talked. They were not wonderful sandwiches, but they were the sandwiches of my childhood. I talked on, with my mouth full. They interrupted often, asking questions and clarifications. When we finished the sandwiches my mother got out a plate of scones and a pot of jam. I was touched that she had thought me worth baking for.

  “So you really could have married a lord,” my mother said.

  “A sir,” Raymond corrected her.

  “A baronet,” I corrected both of them.

  “But you’d ha
ve been Lady Bellingham?” my mother asked.

  “I would, but I didn’t want to be, and it’s all immaterial now because he’s certain to have been arrested too, and very unlikely to have escaped,” I said.

  “And you really have been accepted at Oxford?” Raymond asked. He sounded envious, and I wondered if university had been a dream of his at one time, like Jude the Obscure.

  “I have,” I said.

  “Maybe she’ll go to Oxford and then marry a lord afterwards,” my mother said, proudly.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go at all.” It hit me then. “I don’t know what I can do. I have no idea. I need to find out if Uncle Carmichael is still free, and if he is then get in touch with him, somehow.”

  “You could telephone his flat,” Raymond said. “Or better yet, I could, and see who answers. I could be anybody. I’ll call from the pay phone in the bar.”

  I looked at him with respect. “That’s a very good idea.”

  “I told you he was clever,” my mother said, smiling at him loyally.

  “Ask for Jack, that’s my uncle’s servant.” I stuttered a little on the last word. I hadn’t told them what Penn-Barkis had told me about Carmichael and Jack. “He’ll know everything, if he’s there, and if he is, I’ll talk to him. If someone else is answering, you could say you were a friend of his. He could have any number of friends, he’s bound to.”

  “Bound to,” Raymond agreed. “Or I could just be the fishmonger ringing up to say I had a couple of nice trout.”

  We all got up and went into the bar, which looked sad and deserted now it was empty. It was a big room, full of wood and polished horse-brasses and smelling of beer and men. “This is a big bar,” I said.

  “Roadhouse, we are,” Raymond said. “This is a big step up for us, we started off in a tiny little place, and the brewery keep moving us up because we do so well. It’s your mother, she charms the customers.” He smiled fondly at her. “Hush, now.” He pressed a button on the till and it shot open. He took out two pennies. “Number?”

  I told him the number, and he dialed. It rang and was picked up on the third ring. “Is that Jack?” Raymond asked. “I’m Tom from Tom’s Fresh Fish, and I’m ringing to say I’ve got a nice couple of trout. That isn’t Jack, is it? Well, who are you then? Oh. Well, tell Jack I’ve got the fish, if you see him in the next hour or two, after that it’ll be too late.” He put the receiver down and turned to me with a long face. “That was someone very anxious to know who was calling, and definitely not Jack. Police of some sort, I’d say. I think your uncle’s in very bad trouble, my dear.”

  “He’s not really her uncle,” my mother put in. “She can stay here. Nobody’ll come looking for her here.”

  It was true, and it was even tempting. I could stay there and get to know my mother again. If it was true that she was dreadfully vulgar, then it was also true that I was a frightful snob.

  “No, I have a better idea,” Raymond said, grinning, and shut the till with a snap. “Didn’t you say it’s tonight you’re supposed to be presented to the Queen?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Well, you should go. They won’t be expecting you, so they won’t be trying to keep you out.”

  “They will be expecting me,” I said. “My name is on an invitation.”

  “Yes, the Queen’s men will be expecting to let you in,” Raymond agreed, almost bouncing in his excitement. “But the ones who are trying to get you, Penn-Barkis and that awful Bannister, they won’t. It’ll be the last place they’d look for you. They’d never think you had the nerve to show up there, just where you’re supposed to be.”

  “I suppose not,” I said. “But what good would it do if I went?”

  “Why, you could tell Her Majesty about it, just like you’ve told us, and she’ll see it’s all sorted out. She needs to know about her uncle trying to grab power again, the so-called Duke of Windsor. And she needs to know what abuses are going on in the name of the law.”

  “But—,” I said. I didn’t know where to start explaining about the role of a monarch in a constitutional monarchy.

  “That’s right,” my mother said. “You’re surely not saying that she knows about all this, Elvira?”

  “No,” I said, faintly. “But—”

  “Well, they’re her government, aren’t they?”

  This was unanswerable. I nodded. “But—”

  “It’s been needing something like this,” Raymond said. “Look at all these protests, round the country. People have had enough. People don’t want this kind of thing. Death camps on British soil, that’s more than enough. Normanby getting away with murder, locking up people for saying no to him. That’s not what we voted for.”

  “You did vote for him,” my mother said, slyly.

  “I did the first time,” he said. “After those terrorists at Farthing killed that Thirkie. I wanted a bit of law and order and decent sorting out. But now it’s gone too far. Arresting young girls for dancing with the wrong men, what’s the world coming to?”

  “That’s right,” my mother said.

  “And the thing is, we can’t tell Her Majesty,” Raymond said. “We couldn’t walk up to her and say it, because her guards and people wouldn’t let us near. And you can bet they keep it from her very carefully, make sure she doesn’t get word. But you have this chance, this presentation, but you aren’t like the girls she usually meets who don’t know anything about this any more than she does. You know. You’re one of us, but you’ve got an invite like you’re one of them. And you should go and tell her.”

  “So I should,” I said. I hadn’t gone mad or anything, it was just that they both seemed so sure. I remembered Aunt Katherine talking about meeting the Queen, and I suddenly thought, why not? I’d been rehearsing and practicing for months to be presented, why shouldn’t I make it mean something? The worst that could happen was no worse than could quite likely happen to me anyway. And if they dragged me away from a presentation it would at least be a scandal, people would at least know about that. It would be something I could do. Raymond was right, things had gone too far. “I can’t just turn up as I am. They’d never let me in any more than they would you.”

  “I can lend you a dress,” my mother said.

  I did my best not to shudder. “It’s not that. I have an invitation, but it’s at the Maynards’. And Mrs. Maynard has to present me. That’s on the list.”

  “Will she still do it?” Raymond asked.

  “I don’t even know if they’re free,” I said. “They arrested Mr. Maynard at the same time they arrested me.”

  “They don’t keep people like that for long,” my mother said. “One law for the rich and one law for the poor.”

  “There is one law for rich and poor alike, that prevents them equally from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges,” I said. It was one of Uncle Carmichael’s favorite quotations, and it came from Anatole France, and that’s all I know about it.

  “That’s lovely,” Raymond said. “Prevents them all from stealing bread and sleeping under bridges. I’d like to have that done as a sampler. You may think I’m a rich man—well, not by your standards, but I’ve done well for myself in the trade. I’m comfortable now. But I started at the very bottom, and I’m still an employee. I’d love to go into business for myself, that’s our dream, isn’t it, Irene, but we’ve never had the capital to take the risk.”

  “We could call the Maynards and see if they’re there, and if they’re going to see the Queen tonight,” my mother said, reaching for the telephone.

  “Not from here,” Raymond said.

  “But you said—”

  “We’ve used this phone now. They could trace that the two calls both came from it. We need to go out to the pay phone on the corner.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this,” I said.

  “Just what I’ve read,” he said, shyly. He took a handful of pennies from the till.

  “Always got his nose in a book, he h
as,” my mother said, proudly.

  “And you should tell her to go out to another box and call you back, if she is there. They might be listening to her telephone, but they can’t get every pay phone in London, and they can’t tap it quickly enough.”

  “Her mother wouldn’t let her go out,” I said. “Not just like that.”

  We went out of the front door of the pub to a telephone box on the corner of the street. Across the road I could see people going in and out of the Underground station. “In that case, you should tell her to meet you somewhere, but somewhere that means something else. Like say the Dorchester but mean the Ritz.”

  “The Ritz isn’t a bad choice, if I need to get changed,” I said. It has the most enormous ladies’ rooms, with huge gold-framed mirrors.

  “But you haven’t arranged beforehand to mean the other place,” Raymond said. “Most codes need to be arranged in advance. You need to say something she’ll understand and they won’t, like the place where you dropped your hanky.”

  “All right,” I said, my head spinning with all this.

  “Now, what shall I say to get her on the line?” Raymond asked me.

  “Ask for Miss Maynard, and say—” Invention failed me. “Say it’s about the flowers,” I said. “That should fetch her. Or if it gets her mother, I’ll speak to her.”

  Raymond went inside the box and made the call. Then after a moment he beckoned, stepped out, and I went in. “It’s her!” he said.

  “Betsy?” I asked, picking up the receiver.

  “Oh, thank God,” Betsy said, fervently.

  It was so strange to hear her familiar voice, exactly the same as it always was, as if nothing had changed. “I have to be quick—is your father all right?”

  “Yes, they let him go on Sunday night, late. But they won’t say anything about you—have they let you out? Are you coming home?”