Daughters of Penny Lane

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Alice?’ Marie said again.

  Very slowly, Alice’s right hand rose, the index finger pointing towards the road. ‘There,’ she announced clearly.

  Marie opened the garage door a fraction. A black hansom taxi cab sat on the opposite side of the road. Plastered against its offside window was a face she knew only too well. It was Muth. ‘Oh, God,’ she muttered.

  ‘We can go back now,’ Alice told her companion. ‘It’s finished. I’m here.’

  ‘Do you always know where she is?’

  As reply, the younger woman shook her head. ‘But Callum does.’

  Marie bit her lip. ‘You said his name when you were gone. Who is he?’

  ‘I believe he’s a crying baby who turns into a grown-up man. I’ve no bloody idea, but he lives . . . exists in the front bedroom in Penny Lane, the one I’ve turned into a sewing and sitting room. The baby cries, then he comes as a man. Dad’s with him; I can smell his pipe tobacco.’

  ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘It’s a comfort. She killed him, you know.’

  ‘What? She actually killed–– Surely even she isn’t capable of the cold-blooded murder of our dad?’

  ‘I’d put nothing past her, but no. She mithered. Then something happened, something I’m not sure of yet. Callum’s the messenger. He’s leading me to Muth and warning me that she’s dangerous. In the end, he’ll tell me everything.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘I don’t know how I know, do I? But I know he’s here to take me back to a place he’s dreading visiting, which is probably the only way he can.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  A grin spread across the smaller woman’s face. ‘So far, a long streak of piss in a corner – or a long streak of Dad’s smoke, more like. He’ll get clearer when he’s ready, and I don’t mind waiting, except the otherness gets me down. It’ll stop when he’s told me – and don’t bother asking me how I know again, because I just know.’

  ‘I know you know.’

  ‘Don’t start taking the wee-wee, our Marie. Come on, we’d best get back.’

  Vera lay fast asleep in the run now named the lions’ den. Two tawny heads rested on her belly, and each cub had its own dog. Both boxers slept, too. Peter whispered to Olga, ‘Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why stairs?’

  He groaned. ‘It’s a Lancashire saying. Sorry, I keep forgetting you’re a foreigner.’

  ‘You not forget in the bed. You tell me I have all passion of Russia in me.’

  ‘Behave yourself. Let’s go and see how Dan’s getting on.’

  They found Dan with Alice, Marie, Nigel and Harry. ‘Are you sure?’ Harry was asking.

  Alice, paler than usual, simply nodded her head and sighed.

  ‘Marie?’ Harry asked.

  ‘We’re certain.’ Marie lowered herself onto a sofa. ‘She was outside in a taxi cab staring in at us. Alice has a feeling that Muth’s left the bed and breakfast where she was staying and has come to live near us.’

  ‘That’s exactly what we don’t want to hear.’ Nigel closed his eyes for a second. ‘Maybe I can train Hercules and Jason to attack.’

  ‘Near Claire and Janet, too,’ Marie mused. ‘We’ll have to warn them, but I’m not too sure about telling Nellie. She’s bad enough with her nerves as it is, after living for years with that bloody woman.’

  ‘Knowledge is important,’ Alice stated. ‘Be prepared, and all that.’

  ‘Were you a boy scout?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I got thrown out for being too rough for them.’ Alice looked across the room to where the oldest of the sisters chatted happily with her husband and their daughters. ‘We have to warn Claire and Janet. They left home because of Muth, just like I did.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Marie, go and look after your guests. Tomorrow, I am going to find our mother.’

  Dan approached her on his crutches. ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Just looking round our Marie’s house. Anyway, Daniel – shouldn’t you visit the lions’ den like the bloke in the Bible did?’

  He laughed. ‘Too clever for your own good, you are.’

  Eight

  Olga and Peter, having left the taxi to help Dan into his house, walked the final hundred yards to the shop. As they neared the place, little Leo began to growl deep in his young, inexperienced throat. A happy animal, he seldom complained, so Olga was not surprised to discover that she could not open the door. ‘There is things piled up behind here,’ she announced. ‘Someone is being inside and shutting us out of our own home. I have been interfered with, Peter.’

  Under different circumstances, Peter might have pleaded guilty to interfering with his beloved himself, but this was serious business.

  ‘Peter?’

  He took over, pushing hard at the door, but he seemed to be out of luck and energy, as he couldn’t shift the weight. ‘I think you’re right – we’ve been burgled, love. Come on, let’s walk up to the phone box.’ He held on to his ‘girl’, because she trembled, and her walk was unsteady. ‘It’ll be all right, sweetheart.’ His tall and beautiful Russian noblewoman was not as tough as she chose to appear, but oh, how he loved her. He should be planning for retirement at his age, yet here he was like a bloody teenager . . . ‘Who would do this, Olga?’

  She shook her head. ‘I am thinking is square, pale man with black clothes,’ she muttered. ‘I try not notice him with his grey skin. I see him, but I not speak, because I think I am being foolish and imagining.’

  ‘What?’

  She told him about the dark-clad person who had been walking up and down the lane for a few minutes every day. ‘Russian, I believe from how he look,’ she mouthed. ‘From far up to north. We always say people from that part of Russia are short because weather so cold they do not grow; no sunshine. Prisoners in Siberia are sometimes short, too.’ She glanced at the opposite pavement. ‘He stands there, just there, and stares at my shop. What is he wanting from me, Peter?’

  ‘How the hell would I know, love?’

  Olga shrugged. ‘He looks for something.’

  ‘Well, it’s not likely to be firewood or paraffin, is it? I mean, who’s going to break in for a few gas mantles or a bucket and mop? You’ve nothing of real value for sale, have you?’

  She shook her head. ‘Upstairs, too, is ordinary. We have lived simple lives since we arrive at England. You have seen table old, chairs old, and not many of my clothes are new. The little jewellery I have here is cheap, from market.’ She stopped. ‘But I have a Romanov Bible, given to my mother for her confirmation. Nothing else. In Bible is signatures of tsar and tsarina and some others, but who would want to have that?’

  ‘A collector of historical stuff might think it’s valuable, Olga. Come on, let’s get the police. Don’t cry.’

  She took his proffered handkerchief and dried her eyes. ‘I am in fear. My stomach tumble about like clown in circus.’

  ‘No need to be frightened – I’m here.’

  ‘My daddy, my beloved Batya, he read Bible aloud in Russian. It was comfort for my grandfather, you see. He was old, and he missed the country of his youth.’ She shook herself. Now was not the time for nostalgia; a crime had been committed. ‘But this is not someone looking for Bible, Peter.’

  He took hold of her hands and folded them in his. ‘We’ll let the police in, then we’ll go and sleep at Alice’s or Harry’s house. Or we could go to my flat – it isn’t far. Please, love. The sooner we make the call, the sooner they’ll be here. See, Leo’s stopped growling, so the burglars have probably gone by now.’

  ‘I think I not want police, Peter. If Russian communists find out I am here and I am related to the royal people, this may go in newspaper. Is frightening being a Russian exile from family so hated.’

  Peter ran a hand through his thatch of white hair. ‘But there’s other Romanovs here, love. Nobody cares about that stuff any more. I looked it up in the Picton Readi
ng Room. And you’re no threat. You’re past child-bearing, so what interest would anybody take in you?’

  She lifted her chin in a way that spoke volumes about her provenance. Olga looked regal; even in working clothes, she managed to be a cut above. Now, dressed for a party, she was every inch the princess. ‘Hatred is not from sense, you see. Hatred is from the animal inside us, the small creature that screams for milk, for attention, for sleep. Hatred asks no question; it just kills.’

  He didn’t know what to say, and he told her so.

  ‘The pogroms on Jews showed how bad Russia can be – men slaughtered, women used, and some children, too. When we are normal, the super ego, mostly taught from parents, quietens the id. Russians?’ She shrugged. ‘Wild. Two men made the same mistake – Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. Never invade Russia. She will kill you without a second glance at your face, then someone will write overture about it with bells and cannon. I come from fierce peoples. So no invasions. Except here in my little shop.’

  ‘I won’t invade Russia, love. I must write a reminder in me diary.’ He didn’t know what to suggest. It was dusk, they couldn’t get into the shop or the flat, she didn’t want the police, he didn’t know whether she would accept help from the neighbours. ‘Do you want me to try to get in through the back gate?’ he asked.

  ‘You think they gone?’

  ‘Yes. Definitely, otherwise Leo Tolstoy would be spitting daggers.’

  ‘You try, then. But if you see any sign of trouble, you come out again. Take Leo. I wait here.’

  He didn’t want to leave her, but she insisted. Olga in a stubborn mood did not negotiate, and she refused to knock on doors to seek shelter. Peter followed the hurrying pup and walked round the corner.

  The back gate was hanging crookedly like a drunk after a night on the tiles. Buckets, bowls, candles and kindling were all scattered about, and there was blood on the flags, so the criminal had probably suffered an accident. The rear door had been jemmied, and Peter stepped gingerly into the stockroom, but it wasn’t too bad except for lids spread about hither and yon. Whatever the intruder had sought must be small and containable, then. But Peter wanted to be quick, because his Olga was by herself outside a crime scene. What if . . . ? Oh, God, he had better get a move on.

  He switched on lights and made his way into the shop. Again, lids were lifted off boxes and tins, but the place wasn’t wrecked or messy apart from stuff piled up inside the door. He shifted dolly tubs, galvanized baths and some very large paraffin heaters. ‘Come in, Olga,’ he shouted after opening the front door, ‘there’s no one here.’ Leo was young, but the boxer would have signalled had there been an alien present.

  She squeezed in and followed Peter to the back yard. ‘This is mess,’ she stated unnecessarily as she looked at the state of her own little realm. ‘Well, we can deal with this in a few ways. Let me think.’

  This was one of the many things he loved about the tall, superb woman. She got to the point quickly and seldom minced words, though she didn’t deliver them too clearly. ‘And?’ he asked.

  ‘My home has been . . . raped? It must be cleaned. Bearing in mind that upstairs may be a mess, we can stay up and clean the place all night and work tomorrow in shop, probably to die from exhaustion before bedtime, or we can close tomorrow and put a notice to say we are restocking.’

  ‘That sentence was in nearly perfect English.’

  ‘Oh, shutting up.’

  ‘That wasn’t perfect English. What’s the other option? Is there one?’

  ‘Half and half. We make straight the shop, close off stockroom, and tomorrow, when you finish with Dan, you go and make straight everywhere while I help you. I am sure they went up the stairs. This square man, I am knowing two things about. He may not have been alone. But I am thinking he was leader of this crime.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, even if he not political lunatic, he is still knowing who I am. He look for Romanov emeralds. Emeralds difficult stones to cut and set. They shatter. Strong emerald worth more than diamond. I am having these jewels best in world, but they not here. They in secret room under bank in Liverpool. See how he take off lids? He look for small things like jewels. About these we shall talk, Peter. Romanov emeralds give us good life. Right, which of these things we do?’

  ‘Before we decide, let’s go and have a dekko upstairs.’

  In spite of the situation, Olga grinned. Dekko was a Lancastrian word; she was learning dialect rather than English. She followed man and dog to the upper floor. The Bible remained, though the lid of the box in which it was kept had been removed, while the holy book itself was on the table, unharmed. Cupboard doors had been thrown open, as had drawers. A canteen of cutlery was a tangled heap on the floor, and Leo was growling.

  There was no one in the bathroom, nor in either of the bedrooms. The kitchen was messy, but empty, yet the pup continued to grumble. ‘What he saying?’ Olga asked.

  ‘Whoever did this is nearby. He can sense that. I’m going to follow him; you’d better come too. I’m not leaving you here to start trouble on your own.’

  Leo made short work of the hundred or so yards between his house and Frank’s. Frank was his hero, and Frank would sort out this mess. Outside Alice and Dan’s house, he howled magnificently and almost professionally for so young a dog. When the door opened, Alice was pushed to one side, though not quite knocked over, because Frank was very eager to get to Leo, his best friend.

  Alice spoke. ‘What’s happened?’ But she was talking to fresh air.

  Galvanized by a pair of over-excited boxers, Olga and Peter chased the dogs into a small garden across the way, where they discovered Olga’s square, grey man crumpled on the ground, both hands clutching his right leg. Russian poured from his lips like water over Niagara’s steep drop. He seemed to be in pain, and angry, though slightly apologetic.

  Alice arrived, followed by Vera, wigless, but in a headscarf and floor-length dressing gown. ‘What the buggery’s going on now?’ she demanded to know. ‘Have your dogs gone menthol? We’ve had enough excitement round here with my Jimmy, God rest him.’ Now that Jimmy had departed, even in his ‘three-piece suite’, he had become a ‘God rest’, which was usual in these parts.

  Harry ran across the lane. ‘Alice?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What the hell’s happening, is what,’ he snapped.

  ‘Vera says our dogs have gone menthol, but I think they’ve caught a burglar. Go and tell Dan I’m all right, will you? He’ll be in there struggling with his crutches, and he’s very tired.’

  Harry left, crossed the street and sat on his own garden wall. When madam was in a mood, she needed space to breathe in. He folded his arms and watched the pantomime. Dan could do as he liked; Alice needed watching over.

  The incomprehensible torrent of language continued to flow, this time from Olga’s mouth. She turned to her lover. ‘Peter, he hurt falling over things stacked outside in my yard. Alice, can we bring him to your house? Is closer.’

  Everyone was staring at a pair of beautiful, gentle boxers. No member of the group had ever before seen these snarling, angry monsters, teeth bared, jowls quivering and dripping saliva, dreadful sounds emerging from their throats. The man cowered when the boxers threatened. Frank, the older and more threatening of the pair, placed a paw on the culprit’s sleeve.

  ‘He won’t attack,’ Alice said uncertainly.

  ‘Leo, stop,’ Olga ordered. She turned, looked at Frank, and he backed away from her steady eye contact and lay in an almost peaceful manner at the burglar’s side. ‘Good boys. We go now to Frank’s house, and we are all being good.’

  Harry returned. Between them, he and Peter helped the injured man across the lane to Alice’s house. Dan’s hospital bed was empty, so they placed him on that. ‘Olga and I will see to him,’ Peter advised the company. He led them out of the room, dogs included, returning immediately and closing the door firmly. ‘Right, Olga from the Volga––’

  ‘N
ot from Volga,’ she stated. ‘I am coming from a few miles away from––’

  ‘Shut up.’

  She shut up.

  ‘What the blood and sand is going on, soon-to-be Mrs Atherton?’

  ‘Is complicated.’

  Peter sighed heavily. ‘The day you tell me summat about Russia that isn’t complicated, I’ll have a blue fit in the cut.’

  Her eyes twinkled dangerously. ‘Cut?’ she snapped.

  ‘Canal. Like a river, but man-made by cutting into the earth.’

  ‘Pfff. And you think Russia complicated. He is Yuri. His daddy was looking after our lands at summer house and was shot dead because he not tell where we are gone to. Yuri’s daddy was not sure where we were gone to.’ She spoke a few Russian words. ‘Help him take off trouser, Peter. Looking at leg, see if you can fix.’

  While Peter looked to see if he could ‘fix’, the two Russians spoke quietly.

  ‘How is leg?’ she asked her beloved.

  ‘I can fix,’ he answered.

  ‘Are you take mickey out of me?’ she asked, poker-faced.

  ‘I wouldn’t dare. You’d have me guts for garters.’ Peter pretended not to notice her eyebrows disappearing into her fringe while she processed guts and garters. He went to the bathroom, brought water and dressings, and concentrated on the injury while his better-by-far half rattled on in what might as well have been Martian as far as he was concerned.

  ‘This man my second or maybe third cousin,’ she explained when the patient’s eyelids closed. ‘His name is being Ivanovski. He a poor relation from my father’s side of family. We thought they would be safe, classed as peasants, but we were wrong. His mother, she was dead already, but his dad was murdered and Yuri hid in forest. He had heard my daddy speaking of England, and now Yuri has come to find me. Not bad man. Frightened man, he is. He was afraid to talk to me, but yes, he was search for Romanov jewels. Desperate men do desperate things. We look after him now.’

  Peter blinked. ‘Where’s he been all these years?’

  ‘Prison,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘Siberian gulag. Come.’ She led her fiancé through to Dan’s bathroom while Yuri slept. ‘Before revolution, they work to death millions of people mining lead, salt, silver in Siberia. Was katorga – hard labour. They dig even when legs broke, or they locked in dark holes to punish. In Nertchinsk hundreds of thousands die. Then these prisons close.’