The Lazarus Secrets

by Beryl Coverdale

  He stared at the bed where they had just made love, it was not sex alone, it was intense love so how could she now destroy it, but tears ran down her face as she begged him to understand and make it easier for her.

  Anger rose up in his body as he dressed and collected his belongings, “Won’t you say goodbye to me, Stefan?” she pleaded but he didn’t want to even look at her. He opened the bedroom door and moved swiftly and silently down the staircase and out into the street.

  Paula fell onto the bed and cried for several minutes and then realised that the siren was blaring again. How she hated that noise! Hated the war! And hated herself! She could hear people in the house moving about, making their way down the staircase out through the front door to get to the air-raid shelter. She heard lots of grumbling and shouting but she didn’t care. She didn’t care at that moment if a bomb did drop on her, anything would be preferable to the misery she was feeling.

  The house became silent. The landlady and her family would be crammed into the cupboard under the stairs and the other residents would be huddled in the air-raid shelter waiting for the noise and destruction to commence. Slowly Paula got up from the bed, wiped her tears away and started to dress. There was a movement at the door and the handle started to slowly turn. She thought it might be the landlady coming to check on her as she sometimes did, or perhaps Stefan coming back to say a proper goodbye but the face that came around the slightly open door was that of a complete stranger.

  Mildred Jefferson

  29 DECEMBER 1940

  Mildred Jefferson pulled her tatty fur coat around her and shivered. It was such a cold night and there were not many people around, most of them had more sense than to be out on a night like this. She reached into her handbag and pulled out a half bottle of gin and took a hefty swig, then lit a cigarette and dragged heavily on it. She had moved further into the railway station away from her usual beat at the corner by the entrance. The wind was howling around there and those damned Christmas carols were still blaring out from the crackling loudspeaker. She wished they would switch them off, after all, Christmas was last week. There were lots of people about then — people trying to get home to families for Christmas, servicemen travelling through London to places all over the country — trade had been brisk with many of them having an hour to kill before their trains left. In spite of the crowds and the delays, people had cheerfully sung along with the music and punters had definitely been more generous but now as New Year approached, the music sounded jaded and people were staying indoors out of the cold. The next busy day would be after the New Year celebrations were over when the travellers would be returning to wherever they had come from.

  A man wearing a tweed coat and carrying a briefcase was walking towards her. She extinguished the cigarette with her nicotine-stained fingers and pushed it into her pocket then straightened her body and her smile. He looked a bit posh, but these days that didn’t mean a thing and she was certain he was eyeing her. She stepped forward. “Hello there!” she said, “Do you want some company sir?”

  The man looked flustered and his face coloured, “Certainly not,” he said curtly, looking in horror at the middle-aged street-walker who smelled of gin and cheap perfume.

  “Please yourself, dear,” Mildred chimed as she moved back to rest against the wall and retrieved the half-smoked cigarette from her pocket. She was about to light it when she saw a policeman walking along the platform towards her, “Oh damn!” she muttered and made to move on.

  “Just a minute there, Mildred!” the policeman called.

  She turned back to look at Sergeant Ronald Bowles and dropped her shoulders with relief. “You gave me quite a turn there, Ronnie,” she laughed, “didn’t recognise you in this dingy light, thought I was going to get booked by one of your young bobbies with no more sense. Mind you it must be warmer in the nick tonight than it is out here but then again if I could afford the fine I wouldn’t be out here in the freezing cold.”

  “You should be booked, Mildred. I saw you approach that chap.”

  Mildred let her jaw drop in mock denial, “You saw nothing of the sort Ronnie, I only asked him for a light.” She held up the cigarette between her fingers and chuckled, “now there’s nothing illegal about that is there and the stingy devil said no anyway?”

  “Just move on Mildred, go home, it’s far too cold for you to be hanging around here and I don’t suppose you’ll get much business tonight. It’s time you retired.”

  “And who would pay the rent then, Ronnie?” she asked sarcastically.

  “If you didn’t spend your money on fags and booze perhaps you could pay your rent without this,” the policeman chided gently.

  She set off to walk away and said quietly over her shoulder, “Oh Ronnie Bowles you know fine well I wouldn’t get through the day or night without the fags and booze. Thanks anyway love, see you around, probably on New Year’s Eve.”

  Ronnie watched her swaying along the platform to the entrance of the station and felt nothing but sadness and sympathy for poor Mildred. They had grown up in the same street, gone to the same school and he knew all about her dreadful childhood. The eldest of a large and dysfunctional family, she had been dragged up by her drunken parents with no chance of turning out decently, but he was sorry to see her aging before her time. She had been quite a looker when she was young.

  He walked to the end of the platform and had a word with the railway porter who confirmed that all was quiet and offered him a cup of tea in the warmth of the waiting room. Ronnie thanked him but declined, he was a bit late on his rounds as it was. He turned and slowly retraced his steps back to the entrance of the station. A few seconds later the siren sounded. He looked up and sighed then quickened his pace. In the murky distance, he saw what he thought was Mildred talking to a man in dark clothes and then they walked away together. Ronnie screwed up his eyes but still couldn’t see clearly. Had Mildred picked up a client? They seemed to be arm in arm, or was that one of his young constables having arrested her. No doubt he would find out when he got back to the police station.

  Rona McLean

  JANUARY 1941

  One after the other, in time to the music provided by the small band at the side of the stage, Rona McLean kicked her stocking-clad legs high in the air. Hands on the waist of the girl in front, she kept her head turned towards the audience and fixed her mouth into what she hoped was a wide, sexy smile. She had no problem remembering the routine and being younger than most of the other dancers didn’t find it exhausting. However, she truly hated being on display in the skimpy costume while, the mostly male, audience leered and cat-called or whispered comments to one another and then laughed loudly. They made her skin crawl.

  This was not what she had run away from her home in Inverness to become, it was only just one step up from working in a striptease bar. She had come to London to be an actress, a serious actress and given a chance she knew she could do it. For years she had been going to the pictures to watch the movie stars, to learn how they moved and spoke but her parents had blocked her chances at every turn and told her London was not the sort of place for a young girl to be on her. But Rona was determined. After secretly saving all the money she earned working as a waitress until she had the train fare and enough to live for a week or two, she had packed her bags and without a backward glance, left Inverness for the bright lights of London without telling anyone where she was going.

  She had been so excited travelling south, catching a glimpse of Edinburgh for the first time then crossing the border into England at Berwick-on-Tweed. Looking back she could see how naive she had been.

  Once in London she booked into a boarding house and found that it cost rather more than she thought it would. Day after day she tramped the streets of the city from one theatrical agency to another where she was asked to produce photographs and references or give details of previous experience and shown the door when she admitted she had none.

  “Can you dance?” asked one of the girls a
lso staying at the boarding house as Rona sat on her bed brushing away tears of frustration. She had spent yet another tiring and fruitless day trawling the streets and was missing her Mum and Dad and sisters back in Inverness.

  “Yes I can,” Rona answered sulkily. “I went to dancing classes for years. Why?”

  “Well, there’s a club across town called the Golden Garden and two of their dancers left last week; they actually joined up — can you imagine! They actually volunteered to go to into the Army! Anyway they’ve got one new dancer but I think the manager might still be looking for another replacement, it’s worth a try. I’d go myself, but I’ve got two left feet.”

  *

  The music came to an end and the row of dancers turned their backs to the audience, bent over wiggling their hips and showing their frilly underwear to the hoots and yells of the drunken patrons.

  Rona had been offered the job straight away, she was a good dancer and had natural rhythm but the club was a sleazy dive run by an even sleazier manager. She hesitated at first but ‘beggars couldn’t be choosers’ and she was almost out of money. Eventually decided to take the job and moved into a flat with a few of the other girls also working at the club. They were happy to have her to share the rent but unfortunately, she had to share a bedroom with Norma, one of the older dancers who obviously didn’t like her and who, to Rona’s horror, sometimes brought men home with her. At such times, Rona found it less comfortable but also less embarrassing to sleep on the sofa in the small lounge room.

  The curtain fell. Puffing and panting the dancers left the stage for a forty-minute break during which they had to get themselves something to eat and drink, repair make-up and fix hair as well as change into a different outfit.

  Rona liked some of the girls and one, in particular, an Irish girl called Nancy Carey was often kind to her and shared a sandwich with her if she had none of her own. One night Nancy had even given her a drink of gin, but Rona hated the taste and, much to the amusement of the others, spat it out onto the dressing room floor.

  “Silly little fool,” Norma said impatiently, “that’s gin you know. It’s not easy to come by these days, you’ve no idea what Nancy might’ve had to do to get that.”

  Rona guessed what she was hinting at but couldn’t understand why the others found it so funny. It was true that Nancy always seemed to have plenty of money, but she hadn’t ever seen her with any men, not like Norma who she thought quite shameless.

  The manager called for the dancers to get on stage again and hopping into shoes and adjusting feathers on their heads and hips they wobbled up the wooden steps to start their second show of the evening. As the curtains swung apart, Rona fixed her smile and moved onto the stage but just minutes into the routine the siren wailed. In the wings, the manager franticly waved his arms in a signal for the girls to keep going as he always did, but Rona found it difficult to concentrate. She hadn’t got used to wartime London and was nervous. So far they had been lucky, there had been lots of air-raids but none close to the club. The manager wouldn’t allow them to leave the stage and their biggest problem was usually the noise of the raid preventing them from keeping in time with the music. Tonight, however, it seemed much louder and closer and the audience was distracted and looking up at the ceiling from where a delicate shower of plaster floated down. Still the manager waved them on but from the corner of her eye Rona noticed he now had his hat and coat on and felt sure he was about to run for cover.

  Suddenly the lights flashed off and on again, there was a horrendous crash as the side of the building caved in sending the audience scrambling for the door in the darkness as the lights went out for good. Without a glance towards the now empty space where the manager had stood, the girls fled from the stage, pushing and shoving down the wooden steps and grabbing their coats from the stand where they hung in the narrow hallway.

  Rona was petrified, but Nancy grabbed her hand as they left the club by the back door and they raced along the street towards the air-raid shelter with the rest of the girls hot on their heels. The shelter was some way off and in their high-heeled shoes they had to clamber over rubble from previous raids while more bombs and incendiaries fell around them.

  At last they arrived and clattered down the steps into the shelter and pushed open the door as an ARP Warden pulled them in and quickly closed it behind them. It was a large cavernous space attached to the underground railway, the lighting was dim and the air was thick with the breath and fear emanating from the dozens of people spread around. Rona had only ever seen newsreels of Londoners crammed into air-raid shelters with stout ladies smiling as they knitted and sang cheerful songs, while children slept on makeshift beds, she had never actually been in one and things were not quite as the newsreels showed. The faces of the occupants were anything but cheerful; they were grey and drawn and at each thump of the above attack they flinched nervously.

  The girls found a place to sit down on some wooden crates and as their coats fell open showing their black fishnet stockings and skimpy outfits there was a murmur of disapproval from the women and a one or two whistles from the men. Rona was embarrassed and pulled her coat around her knees, but Nancy thought it a huge joke and pulling out a bottle of gin from her coat pocket raised it towards the whistling men and laughed loudly shouting, “Cheers boys.”

  A huge thud shook the walls and silenced everyone and those who hadn’t closed their eyes in prayer were scanning the stone ceiling waiting for it to collapse upon them at any moment. It seemed to go on forever but eventually the noise grew more distant and people began to move and chatter to their neighbours and smile with relief. No-one spoke to the dancing girls until a man sitting opposite them picked up an accordion and began to play, “Come on girls” he called to them, “give us dance then!”

  The girls ignored him until the he began to play ‘Mademoiselle from Armentieres’ and Nancy, by this time the worse for drink, jumped to her feet, dropped off her coat and began to cavort before her audience. There was clapping and shouting from many of the occupants of the shelter who were grateful for any distraction from the onslaught raging outside, but the women whose husbands appreciated Nancy’s display were not amused and one or two of them tried to physically restrain her. Norma and the other girls went to Nancy’s rescue and suddenly the whole place seemed to be a seething battleground.

  Totally outnumbered and protesting loudly, the dancers were hauled to their feet and pushed out through the doors onto the steps outside. A railway official and the ARP Warden who tried hard to prevent this happening were pushed out of the way and order was only restored when the doors were firmly shut and the girls were stranded in the inferno on the other side. Rona and one two of the others were crying, and Nancy sat on the steps of the shelter alternatively shouting drunken abuse, at the murdering Nazis and the jealous bitches in the air-raid shelter. As they cowered by the wall of the shelter, a building on the other side of the road received a direct hit. Screaming and running for their lives the girls fled in all directions through a cloud of dust and debris.

  Rona found herself alone and lost. The others just seemed to have disappeared and weeping for her mum she wandered backwards and forwards along the street, not knowing which was the right direction to get back to the flat. After almost an hour of dodging rubbish and potholes and praying out loud, Rona suddenly recognised where she was and ran as fast as she could to the door of the block where she lived. She ran up the staircase and into the flat that was, in fact, no safer than the street outside but felt so to her.

  The raid seemed to be grumbling on further away and Rona caught her breath and began to calm down. She washed her hands and face in the bathroom and suddenly felt more exhausted than frightened and was about to go into the bedroom when she heard talking and giggling from inside. Norma had arrived home first and was entertaining so there was no way she could sleep in her bed. Unhappily she pulled her coat around her and huddled beneath a blanket she had earlier left on the sofa; putting her head under
the pillow she again sobbed for her parents and wondered if they were crying for her. She made up her mind she was getting out of London as soon as she had the train fare to Inverness. It would be embarrassing returning to admit she had failed, but anything would be better than this.

  Sometime later, the opening of the bedroom door brought Rona out from under the pillow and in the darkness she could just make out two figures moving across the room. She heard a man’s high-pitched voice say goodnight to Norma and ask if she would see him again. “We’ll have to see won’t we,” Norma replied callously shutting the door behind him

  The all-clear sounded and Rona got up from the sofa frightening Norma, who had no idea she was there. “For heaven’s sake girl, what are you trying to do? Give me a heart attack or something creeping about the place in the dark.”

  Rona began to shake all over again, “Please Norma don’t shout at me, not tonight, I’m frightened. Will you put the light on, please?”

  Norma sighed and her voice softened, “No point love, the power’s gone off again.”

  Rona began to cry loudly and Norma sat her down on the sofa holding her arm, “Pull yourself together love you’re all right, it’s all over now. You stay here and I’ll go downstairs to the other flats and see if anyone has any candles to spare.”

  Grateful for the first friendly words Norma had ever spoken to her, Rona wiped her tears, huddled beneath the blanket and pulled her coat around her. She was still wearing only her stage costume and was shivering with cold, but Norma would be back soon and so would the other girls, she hoped they were all right. She comforted herself with her decision to go home to her parents and to safety.

  The door opened gently and quietly and Rona stood up to see who had come home and spoke softly trying not to frighten anyone else as she had Norma. She saw the shape move swiftly towards her and felt the swishing slash across her throat that stopped her breath and made her eyes widen as she fell back towards the sofa. Warm blood poured over her and Rona McLean, the young runaway from Inverness, gasped her last.