A Christmas Wish

by Lizzie Lane

  Her grandmother had also kept a letter and a telegram from James’s wife, Bridget.

  Anna Marie had fallen silent at the sight of it. Magda had gone to live with Aunt Bridget – somewhere in London. And here was her aunt’s address and the news that Magda had entered a house of ill repute where she sold her body for money.

  At first she upheld the attitude of her grandfather and felt shocked and ashamed on seeing such a statement. Her sister deserved to be an outcast. On reading it again she thought of Venetia and what she would do on reading this. In her head she could hear her pronouncing that Magda was still their sister.

  ‘Blood is thicker than water.’

  But Venetia wasn’t here. She had to make up her own mind.

  Tucking the letter in with the other bits and bobs that had once belonged to her grandparents, Anna Maria resigned herself to moving to London. After all, she could at least call in on Aunt Bridget and get it confirmed from her how her sister had sunk so low.

  Sister Betty Flanagan was a midwife and nurse, aged around thirty with hazel eyes, broad shoulders and an aura of determined efficiency.

  Tasks that others would rush at, Betty approached methodically, even slowly. And yet she still finished her tasks more quickly than anyone else. She spoke with an Irish lilt to her voice and was calmly efficient, her strength coming from her manner and some unspoken faith either in herself or something higher. The latter belief held sway. Rumour had it that she used to be a nun. Magda wasn’t sure whether it was true or not.

  ‘Doctor Brodie. Your young man is waiting for you.’

  There was a sparkle in Sister Betty’s eyes when she said it and her statement was accompanied by a knowing smile.

  Magda laid the back of her hand onto her cheek. It was warm. She had to concede that.

  ‘Are you as cheeky with the male doctors, Sister Betty?’

  ‘I speak my mind. None of this toadying up that most nurses do. I’m not here to nursemaid them, thank you very much. Anyway, I like women doctors. They let you know what they’re thinking and treat a nurse almost as an equal. They want you to understand what they understand. Men doctors don’t do that. To them we’re women before we’re professionals and most of the time they don’t let us forget it. Only here to wash bedpans and clear up vomit; that’s what they think. The very idea of it …’

  The pair of them, the handsome young policeman and the vibrant, dark-haired doctor, were going to the pictures. Anna Karenina. Greta Garbo. They were making the most of their time together; who knew where any of them would be this time next year, now the country was at war, the capital in darkness and everyone who could fit into a uniform was wearing one.

  Sister Flanagan’s mind raced with possibilities as she busied herself carrying out her duties. The first time she’d clapped eyes on Doctor Brodie, her thoughts went back to the other Brodie girl, the one who had given birth to a stillborn baby. Even before helping the girl bury her baby in sanctified ground, she’d been having doubts about her calling as a nun. She’d seen too much hurt caused by those who had never known either passion or childbirth. How cruel the Catholic Church was to tell a mother that her child was doomed to exist forever between heaven and hell.

  Her decision to help expectant mothers as a nurse rather than a nun had come shortly after that. To date she’d never regretted it.

  For some time she’d been agonising whether to bring the matter of Venetia Brodie up with Magda. She was in no doubt that the two girls were related. On asking around as to the doctor’s background, she’d been told she had lived with a wealthy benefactress, now deceased, and was well provided for, unlike Venetia Brodie who had been left to flounder.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Magda 1939

  ‘Will you join up?’

  Magda and Daniel were walking arm in arm on their way home after the pictures. The newsreel had presented a confident picture of Britain’s chances against the formidable foe, altering the defeat of Dunkirk into a victory that never was. Sandbags had been hastily piled up against buildings, barrage balloons were floating like fairy elephants in the sky and rationing was beginning to bite hard.

  Daniel was taking his time answering.

  Magda nudged his elbow. ‘Well?’

  He shook his head. ‘Police officers are in a reserved occupation. They are not required to join up, although arrangements are afoot to bring in retired officers to fill the gaps if need be. But …’

  ‘But?’

  She could tell by his demeanour that he wanted to say more.

  ‘You know my family’s Italian? People of Italian descent are being categorised as aliens. Their movements could be restricted.’

  ‘You think you will be? You think I might be?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. But my father and mother might be. They still hold Italian passports.’

  She looked up at him. ‘You’d go wouldn’t you? Given the chance. You’d join up.’

  ‘I don’t know. It depends. I wouldn’t want to let anyone down and as long as they brought in someone retired to take my place … Anyway,’ he said, turning to her and smiling, ‘why would I want to leave you?’

  ‘You might not be leaving me. It might be the other way round. I’m a doctor, Danny, though I’m presuming male doctors will be called up first.’

  He hugged her tight. ‘I don’t think I could stand that. I might have to marry you. The military don’t take married doctors – not female ones anyway. At least I could make sure you stayed in England if nothing else.’

  She laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. He felt so good to be with and even though she often thought of her family, Danny’s presence had filled a big gap in her life.

  ‘All the way home?’ he said to her.

  She nodded. ‘All the way home. But I have to get up early. So you can’t stay.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that.’

  They stopped and kissed passionately, Magda thinking that she might not last the night without Daniel lying next to her.

  They broke breathlessly. ‘Are you sure?’ His voice was warm and moist against her hair. He breathed it in, smelling the hint of lavender – shampoo perhaps. Never mind. She always smelled good.

  ‘Duty calls,’ she said to him, patting his chest with both hands. ‘Take me halfway. Just as far as the arches. I’ll be fine from there.’

  Neither of them noticed the envious eyes glaring at them from the car on the other side of the road.

  Bradley Fitts stepped out of the passenger side of the car. His driver got out of the other.

  ‘What do we do, boss?’ asked the driver.

  ‘Follow her.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You heard what he said. They’re going their separate ways. Now ain’t that just fine and dandy! I’m going to follow her. I want you to follow him.’

  ‘But what do I …’

  ‘Just warn me if he turns back in her direction. I want her to myself. Have you got that?’

  For a while they walked together, their steps in time and soft. They stayed well back, not chancing for either their footsteps to be heard or their shadows to fall too far ahead of them.

  Magda and Daniel hugged and kissed before parting company at the railway arches.

  ‘I don’t like leaving you to go home alone.’

  ‘It’s only a matter of yards,’ she laughed. ‘This isn’t Whitechapel, or the nineteenth century, and Jack the Ripper – whoever he was – is long dead.’

  They kissed one last time before breaking apart and going their separate ways.

  Bradley Fitts and his driver hung back, Bradley clenching his jaw at the wanton hussy’s behaviour with that bastard policeman. The copper was getting what didn’t belong to him. Magda belonged to him and him alone, and Bradley Fitts wasn’t keen on sharing.

  ‘You follow the copper. Make sure he don’t head back this way.’

  ‘What do I do if he changes direction?’

  ‘Deal with it. A bit of assault
won’t hurt. Then leg it. Right?’

  Bradley Fitts felt an almighty surge of empowerment. He’d been trying to get close to Magdalena Brodie for as long as he could remember. There had always been willing women in his life, but none of them were as intelligent or as exotic as her. She was the flame and he was the moth but he damned well wasn’t going to get burnt. On the contrary, he’d prefer it the other way round. And once she’d received the pleasure of his passion, well … anyone could have her … and he’d make sure they did.

  It wasn’t easy to explain why he wanted to destroy her, even to himself. The fact was she’d set herself up above the crummy circumstances of her beginnings. She’d become something good and clean, like a pretty piece of china. He’d always enjoyed smashing china, desecrating something beautiful. And that, mate, is what you want to do to her. Break her into pieces.

  In his mind he imagined her naked and unable to stop him doing whatever he wanted to do. She would scream, not realising that would only spur him on to hurt her more, to possess her more.

  His pulse quickened at the thought of it. He couldn’t wait to have her, and once he had done …? Well, that copper wouldn’t want her then. No respectable man would want her then.

  At one point he thought he heard footsteps following behind him. Sidestepping into a shop doorway, he looked back along the pavement.

  Some light fell from shop windows and overhead lamps onto the street. A group of cats snarled and lashed out over something that had fallen out of a dustbin.

  He decided that was what he had heard.

  The turning into Prince Albert Mews went beneath a pretty arch that connected one rank of shops to the other.

  The tarmac road gave way to cobbles and the lighting was minimal.

  To the right of the arch was a small opening where one of the old rivers of London swirled between sewers before joining the Thames. Recent heavy rain had swollen the flow of water to a raging torrent and the noise was thunderous as it crashed through the narrow channel.

  He slid his tie from around his neck, winding the ends around each hand. Soon it would be around hers. Not that he was going to kill her. The plan was that he’d loop it around her neck at the moment she put her key in the door. Then he’d push her inside. They’d have privacy then; just the two of them together all night and if he worked things right – in fact ending her life – someone else would get the blame – that copper with a bit of luck.

  Just as he judged the time was right he was yanked backwards.

  ‘Fitts! I want a word with you.’

  Thinking Daniel Rossi had caught up with him, Bradley cursed his driver. On seeing that it wasn’t Rossi, he looked puzzled, then angry.

  ‘Leave go of me or it’ll be the worse for you.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  The man’s tone was mocking. His accent was Irish, his breath stank of booze but his grip was like iron.

  Bradley attempted intimidation by impressing on him who he was and the likely repercussions.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’

  He said it threateningly, which was exactly what he intended. The Fitts family were famous on the manor, gangsters, thugs and dealers in everything illegal. This man, whoever he was, had to be impressed.

  ‘Oh yes. I know exactly who you are. You’re a thug and I don’t like what you’re doing.’

  That mocking tone still, and that grip. If the man had been closer to his own height, perhaps he could have head-butted him before landing a punch in his guts. But the man holding onto him was over six feet tall. No matter his age or general health, whatever job he did for a living had kept him fit. He smelled of the sea. A docker. Perhaps a merchant seaman.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Bradley snarled, his own hands gripping the other man’s wrists, trying in vain to unwrap the strong fingers from his coat lapels.

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. It is my business.’

  ‘She’s just a tart,’ Bradley snarled, then suddenly leered as a thought occurred to him. This man had also been following Magdalena Brodie, perhaps with the same thought in mind.

  ‘Tell you what. You can have her after me. But I get first go. Right?’

  Suddenly he was yanked three feet off the ground, his legs dangling, his feet thrashing in a bid to kick the man’s legs from under him.

  Struggling did no good. Bradley could smell the man’s sweat, drowned in the stink of his booze-laden breath.

  The man was telling him something, crying as he did so, like somebody confessing their sin to a bloody priest.

  I’m no priest, he wanted to shout, but not a sound came from his throttled throat.

  ‘I neglected my daughter. I’ve been looking for a way of making it up to her. You’re it, Fitts. I’m removing you from her life.’

  Joe Brodie’s words tripped a light in Bradley’s brain.

  ‘You can have everything I’ve got in my wallet. Everything,’ he shouted.

  His voice was drowned in the sound of the racing water. He was closer to the water now, the spray flying upwards into his face.

  Fear that other people had felt for him was now his. This man didn’t care about his violent reputation and the power of his family and friends.

  Panic set in.

  ‘Put me down! Put me down!’

  His shouts went unheard. He cried out as one hip was dragged across the top of the stone wall, a jagged upstanding stone tearing through his top-quality trousers and grazing the skin from his flesh.

  For a moment he was suspended over the raging torrent, held by the collar of his coat and the seat of his pants. Below him the water thundered into a narrow culvert, a culvert that would no doubt get ever narrower with no room for air, filled only with an icy torrent.

  Nobody saw him go in and nobody heard his cry of anguish and the splash as his body hit the thundering water.

  Joseph Brodie stood looking down into that dark water for what seemed like an hour, wondering whether he should follow the body he’d sent down to hell. He deserved to go to hell himself. He’d not done the best for either his wife or his children. Too late now. There was nothing he could do about the past and their future was their own.

  At one point he’d thought he could make amends for his shameful neglect and reacquaint himself with the family he’d left behind. Meeting his son Michael was the foretaste of realising it was not possible. The boy had eyed him with outright contempt. Other people, good people, had given him the love and affection that he had failed to give.

  As for Magda … well … he’d heard bitterness, even hatred in her voice, but at least he’d done something to make amends. Bradley Fitts would not trouble her again.

  He looked up as a light came on in a window of the house where his daughter lived. She’d done well, and he was proud of that.

  Pulling his collar up against the cold, he turned his back on his daughter and his past. There was nothing else for it but to keep walking back to the only life he’d ever known, the one he’d chosen for himself.

  The sound of a ship’s horn came from the direction of the docks. It sounded twice – moving to port – out onto the river and from there out into the world. A lonely sound, but one he was used to.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Magda

  Daniel Rossi looked through the contents of the box Magda had given him.

  Her heart fluttered when he raised his eyes to meet hers. She saw jubilation and guessed it was linked to potential justice.

  ‘I’m guessing you know what this contains?’ he said to her.

  ‘Sort of. Winnie knew Reuben Fitts for a long time. I’m guessing she knew enough to put him behind bars.’

  She placed a tray of tea on the piecrust table in front of their chairs.

  ‘Digestives,’ she said. ‘No custard creams.’

  ‘Darn.’ He grinned. She’d got to know his tastes and he’d learned that he mustn’t crowd her; that her upbringing had made her wary of depending on others. In time he hoped she would r
ely on him. He wanted that badly.

  Daniel closed the lid of the box. ‘I’ve got enough here to put Reuben Fitts away for years. Not Bradley of course. We fished his body out of the Thames. He’d been drowned, but there were contusions – suggesting someone had forced him into the water. We’ve no idea who. All we can surmise is that he upset the wrong person.’

  ‘I’m glad. I shouldn’t be saying that should I? He’s dead. Gone from my life.’

  Daniel turned his cup around in its saucer. ‘You haven’t heard anything from your father?’

  ‘No. But I do have hopes that his guilt might stir things. I had no reply to my letter to Ireland, but even after all this time, he’s more likely to know people there who can help trace my sisters. My brother too come to that.’

  Magda noticed Daniel’s fingers nervously tapping the lid of the box whilst looking down into the glowing coals of the fire. Something was wrong.

  ‘There’s something else in that box, isn’t there?’

  He heaved a big sigh. Although for a moment it seemed like he was going to deny that there was, she could tell just by looking at him.

  ‘I know it’s not custard creams,’ she said playfully. ‘Come on. Give it to me.’

  ‘I found something. I’ve left it on top,’ he said as she took the box from him.

  She turned the small key in the brass lock and lifted the lid. The two notebooks looked expensive and had red silk linings. ‘Harrods’ was printed inside the front covers in gold leaf.

  The letter was lying on top of the books. She frowned at him. ‘I didn’t see this when I opened it.’

  ‘I found it hidden inside the silk lining of one of the notebooks whilst you were making the tea.’

  Magda frowned at the postmark. ‘London?’

  He knew she’d been expecting an Irish postmark.

  She took out the contents, which consisted of a note attached to a letter.

  Mrs Patience Armitage,

  Compound 54,

  Lee Cheong, Peking, China

  7th of February, 1938

  Dear Miss Brodie,

  I am the sister of Miss Elizabeth Burton, lately of the Sycamore Lane Workhouse and now with our Lord in Heaven.