by Louise Hare
The music stopped and was replaced by a chorus of greetings and laughter. Evie looked up to see Sam walking in through the back gate. He’d made her laugh the day before, teasing Lawrie and making fun of the film they’d just seen. He and Lawrie shared a room, up on the top floor he’d told her. Evie was just glad to see another friendly face. A fifth man followed him in carrying a huge instrument case on his back.
‘This’ll have to do.’ Rose released Evie from her servitude. ‘It’s not perfect but it’s a hundred times better than it was.’
There was an empty crate beside Lawrie but Rose was too quick, even in heels. Evie found herself perching between Sam and the latecomer, introduced as Moses.
‘So, we still need a name,’ Johnny reminded them. ‘You know, most bands name themselves after the band leader.’
‘And since that’s you…’ Sam laughed. ‘Although we never did make a decision on that either, did we?’
‘I stand at the front. That good enough? And was it not I who put us all together in the first place, Sam Miller?’
‘C’mon fellas, we just need a simple name,’ Lawrie reminded them.
‘How ’bout Johnny’s Jokers?’ Sam suggested.
‘How ’bout you watch your mouth—’
‘The Johnny Sands Band will do for now,’ Lawrie raised his voice over the squabbling. ‘We just getting started out after all. We can come up with something else later.’
Johnny nodded in appreciation while Sam kissed his teeth but let go of his argument.
‘I like it,’ Rose said. ‘It has a ring to it.’ She put a hand on Lawrie’s shoulder and Evie saw Sam choke back a snigger as he clocked it, exchanging a gleeful glance with Moses.
What a fool she’d been. She’d come round because she’d dared believe that Lawrie liked her. Only here he was, smiling at Rose as she leaned against him. How naïve of Evie to assume that just because Rose was married, she wasn’t a rival. Ma said all the time that morals that had loosened during the war hadn’t been tightened since. Even on their own street things went on behind closed doors. Everyone knew that Mrs Foster’s youngest daughter wasn’t Mr Foster’s. He’d been a prisoner of war, kept captive in France for over a year before Flo was born.
‘You work, Evie?’ Johnny drew her back into a conversation she hadn’t been paying attention to.
‘Evie’s at secretarial college, aren’t you, Evie?’ Rose smiled at her. ‘I wish I was still a young whipper-snapper like you. No worries, living at home, not having to pay bills.’
Evie felt them all staring at her, very aware suddenly that she was still wearing the dress her mother had approved for church: blue and white checked, knee length and buttoned to a Peter Pan collar that now felt tight around her neck. Her ankle socks were white cotton. She was dressed like a schoolgirl. Rose was right.
‘I should go.’ She stood up before she could feel more of a fool. ‘I promised Ma I’d wouldn’t be long. Thank you for having me, though. I liked hearing you play.’
‘But you didn’t get to hear my bass!’ Moses protested.
Lawrie jumped up. ‘I can walk you home if you like.’
‘Thank you. That would be kind.’ She smiled, hoping that Lawrie didn’t fathom the real reason for her premature departure. Rose was what Delia would call a tart, she decided. It would serve her right if her husband found out what she was up to. And if Evie was too young for Lawrie then Rose was definitely too old. She was twenty-five, if she was a day.
‘This supposed to be band practice,’ Johnny told Lawrie.
‘Five minutes, man.’ Lawrie jammed his hat on his head and led Evie back through the house. They crossed the street, heading towards the main road.
‘I’m sorry about all that. The cleaning, I mean. I didn’t even know Rose was coming round. She means well but she can be a little forceful!’
‘At least there weren’t any live mice running around!’ she said.
‘Reckon I would have been the one screaming loudest if there was,’ he joked. ‘Honestly, I hate that place. Soon as I can afford something better I’m out of there.’
‘You know, my next-door neighbour takes in lodgers. I can ask if you like. She’s just let the front room but she has a box room as well.’
He slowed his gait and she felt the back of his hand brush hers, the tingle spreading the length of her arm. ‘You wouldn’t mind having me as a neighbour?’
‘’Course not.’ She looked up and smiled.
‘Then I’d be very grateful. And I was wondering… would you like to come to the Astoria with me on Tuesday?’
Tuesday was Ma’s bridge night. As long as she was home before ten she’d never know. ‘I’d love to.’
‘Perfect. I’ll meet you out the front? Six o’clock?’
She made him leave her at the corner, just in case Ma happened to be out the front of the house for some reason. Halfway down the street she dared to turn back and there he was, watching. He tipped his hat to her before vanishing back the way they’d come.
12
‘What’s that long face for?’ Ma asked.
They were eating breakfast, or at least Ma was. For a few days after her confrontation with Rathbone, her mother had been in one of her dark moods and was only just coming out of it. Evie was reluctant to tell her what she’d seen in case it caused a regression.
‘I saw that detective again. Across the street, just now.’
She’d gone to the window for the daylight, to pluck her eyebrows. A movement had caught her eye as she clicked the compact shut: Rathbone climbing out of his car. He leaned against the vehicle as he lit his cigarette, his eyes on the Ryan house. Evie hadn’t moved a muscle but he’d sensed her presence anyway, looking up and offering a salute. He looked happy with himself as he walked off down the road.
‘You stay away from that man,’ Ma told her.
‘I was hardly going to walk up to him and wish him a good morning,’ Evie pointed out. ‘Should I tell Lawrie, d’you think?’
‘Why? Just cause that man’s loitering around here doesn’t mean that it’s anything to do with Lawrie.’ Her mother looked as unsure as Evie felt.
She hurried out to catch the bus to work and was lucky, a 37 showing up just as she reached the stop. She climbed to the upper deck and sat down as they pulled away. Even travelling the same route every day, she loved to look down and spot changes to the urban scenery: the bomb sites that were slowly beginning to disappear, the new buildings that stuck out like a book put back in the wrong place on the shelf. It was all so untidy but she could barely remember what it had all looked like before the war. Before the air raid sirens had started sounding on a regular basis and she’d been shipped off to Devon for the first time. Unless the bus was packed she was usually left alone in her reverie so she looked up in surprise when she felt a weight press down on the double seat.
‘Fancy bumping into you here, Miss Coleridge.’
She turned away from the houses of Acre Lane and stared straight into the face of DS Rathbone, his skinny lips turned up in the smile of a villain from a B movie.
‘Didn’t mean to startle you.’ Mock concern was etched across his face. ‘Only I thought it was time me and you had a little chat.’
‘I don’t have anything to say to you.’ Her heart began to race. ‘Except that you’re looking at the wrong man. Lawrie’s a good person.’
‘You may very well be correct.’ He leaned closer and she was repulsed to feel the tickle of his moustache against the shell of her ear. He was wearing too much cologne and the stink caught in her throat. ‘I did a little investigating, see, and it seems I had my eye on the wrong house all along.’
She felt her mouth drop slightly as if she were his marionette, helpless to resist. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that we’ve had a lot of people coming forward with information. Lot of concerned citizens round this neck of the woods. Most of them don’t know anything at all but we had one very interesting telephone call with a person
who gave us your name.’
Evie’s chest tightened. She felt like she was wearing a corset, barely able to breathe. It wasn’t warm out but she felt the tingle on her skin as her forehead broke into a sweat. ‘My name?’
‘Don’t play the innocent, Miss Coleridge. I know why you disappeared off to Devon for all those months. The truth, I mean, not the story you told everyone.’
‘I was ill.’ Her voice was barely louder than a whisper. ‘I went to my aunt’s to recuperate.’
‘For six months?’ He pulled out his notebook. ‘You left London in early November 1948 according to your previous employer, after only a few weeks in the job. And Vernon & Sons have you starting with them in late May of 1949.’
‘I had bronchitis,’ she whispered, scared to look behind and see if anyone else could hear their conversation. ‘I needed to leave the city because of the air.’
‘Bronchitis, eh? Or was it pneumonia? It’s easy to get confused, isn’t it, Miss Coleridge? I mean, six months is quite a while.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Long enough to vanish before anyone realises there’s anything going on. Long enough to give birth to a baby girl and then – well, that’s where I get stuck. I was hoping you could tell me what happened next. My mystery caller couldn’t tell me so I wonder what you did with your baby, Miss Coleridge. Would you like to tell me now so we can save time?’
Evie closed her eyes, hardly able to believe what was happening. Only two people in the world knew: Ma and Aunt Gertie. Neither of them would have called the police.
‘I’m a reasonable chap, Miss Coleridge. Or can I call you Evelyn?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She wiped treacherous tears from her cheeks.
‘Then maybe I should talk to Mr Matthews. Find out what he knows.’
‘No!’ She began to sob. ‘Please. Please don’t. Lawrie doesn’t know.’
In front of them was an older woman, her head turning slightly as she heard Evie hiccupping back the tears. Evie willed her not to turn around; she couldn’t bear it. She’d thought that nothing could be as shameful as her mother discovering what she’d done, but this was far worse, being forced to admit her mistake to this vile man. And here, where anyone could be listening in.
‘You’re not leaving me an awful lot of choice.’ He sighed as if she’d disappointed him. ‘Is it the bus? We can go down to the station if you’d prefer. Would that be better, Evelyn? Have a nice chat over a cup of tea?’
She knew that he was playing a game with her but that didn’t mean it wasn’t effective. He wouldn’t leave her alone until she talked. They were beside Clapham Common now, the north side, the trees beginning to show their blossom. On the other side of the bus she knew they were passing Cedars Road, the imposing building where Evie had been born standing halfway along.
‘It’s got nothing to do with Lawrie. He doesn’t know.’ She spoke in a whisper, her eyes on the middle-aged woman in front.
‘He’s not the father? Then who?’ Rathbone’s pencil was poised. ‘I’ll need a full name, Evelyn.’
Evie paused. ‘I never knew his name. There was a party. That was where it happened. I never saw him again, he left London the week after. Went to stay with his brother up north somewhere, I heard. Birmingham or Manchester, somewhere like that.’ She found her handkerchief in her bag and blew her nose.
‘But it was a girl. I found the birth certificate. Registered in Exmouth last April.’
She’d shut out the memories for so long that they felt like someone else’s, like a movie she’d seen. ‘She’s not Ophelia, I promise. My aunt, she used to be a nurse, she said there was nothing to be done. She was born… well, she never…’ Her voice sounded crackly in her ears, like listening to the news on the wireless during a rainstorm. ‘I was supposed to give her up anyway.’
‘Right.’ Rathbone seemed less certain now. ‘So she died?’
Evie nodded and gulped back tears.
‘Idiot yokels down in Devon, they could have bloody told me.’
She felt the seat raise slightly as Rathbone got up and pulled the cord to request the next stop.
‘Thank you for your time, Miss Coleridge,’ he said, as if he hadn’t just ripped her life apart along the seam she’d tried so hard to stitch together, and vanished down the stairs.
This was her own stop, she realised, but she was paralysed, the shame an overwhelming weight keeping her body pressed into the seat. Could it have been Rose? Hadn’t Rose tried to grab onto her as she’d left the café, as if she had something more to say? She was capable of anything, Evie knew that; and she’d known that Evie had been in Devon.
She forced herself to take slow breaths and the panic began to dissipate, her senses returning fully as the bus stopped opposite the Town Hall in Wandsworth. She stumbled down the stairs and checked her watch. She was already late for work. There was a telephone box and she rummaged in her purse for the right coins, the operator efficiently connecting her to Mrs Jones.
‘I’m ever so sorry,’ she said, her voice naturally hoarse. ‘I was on my way to work and I was sick. I think I ate some bad fish last night.’
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cool of the glass panel as Mrs Jones gave her a stern talking to for letting Mr Sullivan down, biting her lip as she heard that Mildred would take her place for the day.
At least Ma wouldn’t be home until later. She did for two families on a Wednesday, the Rodgers whose house overlooked the Common, and the Proctors over in Balham. When she got home Evie ran upstairs to her bedroom and reached under her bed, her fingertips grazing the item she sought. It had been pushed right to the back, against the wall, and she had to lie on her belly and stretch out with her arm to grab it.
The music box had been a Christmas present when she was eight years old, a lost treasure found by Ma in a junk shop. The japanned wood was smooth under Evie’s fingertips, inlaid with a painted woodland scene. She sat cross-legged on the floor, her back against the bedframe and undid the catch, the tiny dancer within springing upright. She wound the key and watched the ballerina twirl as the steel comb teased out the theme to Swan Lake. The box had been made to hold something small and precious, jewellery perhaps, but Evie had none. Instead she had kept the one reminder that, for a very short time, she had had a daughter, even if she had only ever lived in Evie’s own thoughts. She lifted out the hand-crocheted booties, a spur-of-the-moment purchase from a market stall in the Devonshire village where her Aunt Gertie lived.
Until she’d handed over the coins, watching over her shoulder to make sure Gertie was still busy at the fishmonger’s, she hadn’t realised how badly she wanted to keep her baby.
1948
‘Hello there!’
He turned on the doorstep, his key in the lock, surprised to see Rose. In one hand she swung a string shopping bag though she looked far more glamorous than the everyday housewife off to the shops.
‘I was hoping to catch you,’ she said. ‘It’s such a lovely day and I wondered if you fancied taking a dip.’
‘A dip?’ He shook his head in confusion.
‘Brockwell Lido’s only ten minutes from here.’ She laughed as she realised he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. ‘It’s an open-air swimming pool. It’s the perfect day for a swim, don’t you think?’
Lawrie glanced up at the sky. It was still blue enough but were Londoners really so crazy they’d bother to build themselves a swimming pool that was open to the whims of the British weather?
‘I don’t have a bathing suit,’ he told her.
‘Aha!’ She reached into the bag and, with a magician’s flourish, produced a pair of navy swimming trunks. ‘I swiped Frank’s for you. And I’ve another pair if one of your friends fancies coming along.’
He wasn’t really in the mood for company, but the thought of floating in cool water overcame his doubts. He was meeting Evie later on and he didn’t want to be in this foul mood, caused by yet another wasted day of job hun
ting. Jobs miraculously filled by the time he arrived for an interview; not qualified; too qualified; ‘If it were up to me… but…’ At the last place the excuse had been ‘no foreigners’, silence greeting the sight of Lawrie’s passport as he waved it under the man’s nose. But for the gold letters spelling ‘Jamaica’ beneath the coat of arms it looked just like any other British passport. Not good enough apparently. It made Lawrie wonder if anything ever would be.
Leaving Rose on the doorstop he ran upstairs to find Sam. It was a simple matter of uttering the words ‘swimming pool’ to entice Sam into the escapade.
Rose led them down Railton Road, her chatter filling the silence. Sam kept looking across at Lawrie and grinning. Barely in the country three weeks and you already got two girls after you, he’d said back at the house. Perhaps it would have been more sensible to turn Rose down but she was just being nice. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And it wasn’t as if her invitation had been just for him.
‘You haven’t asked me yet,’ Rose reminded him.
‘Asked you what?’
‘If I’ve had any luck. With the band. Getting you work.’
He hadn’t even given it a thought. It wasn’t as if the band was ever going to pay his way. If he didn’t get a job soon he’d have to talk to Aston, see if there was a chance of anything with the RAF.
‘You got good news?’ Sam asked.
‘I should tell Johnny first really, since he’s the bandleader.’ She shot Lawrie a sly glance. ‘But since you’re here… I’ve got you a slot at the Lyceum next Friday night. Early on, before the crowds get there, but if they like what they hear then they’ll have you back. It’s a foot in the door, as they say.’
‘The Lyceum? Sounds quite grand.’ Grander than a church hall at least.
‘It’s not as fancy as it was. It was a theatre back in the olden days but now it’s a ballroom. Gets packed in there on a weekend.’