by Gerald Wixey
Stuart nudged her, ‘Your friend?’
‘What do you know about him?’
‘That your daughter slept with him.’
Mrs Schwartz hissed, then shook her head, ‘I told you she was competitive, cutting her teeth, quickly finding out that it’s possible to get what you want out of people.’ She turned her hand over and started to beat a tattoo with the couple of large rings. A sharp, regular beat. ‘My husband found them in bed together, my lover and my daughter, how about that one.’
I couldn’t believe any of this, all the time I needed to know.
Who seduced who?
Connie smiled, ‘It got me out of trouble I suppose.’
‘Are you still seeing him?’
‘Don’t be stupid.’ She pushed her chin out.
‘We’ll need to speak to him.’
Quiet.
After a long time, ‘I don’t know.’ She looked at us, from one to the other… slowly. Leant across and picked Stuart’s notebook up. Scribbled an address and phone number down, underlined them with pressure more suited to cutting someone’s throat. Rolled the pencil back across the table and sat back.
Is that all there is?
No, I needed to know about Teddy. I said. ‘What does your husband do?’
She frowned, took another of my cigarettes, ‘I have a photographic agency, he takes the photos – it does very nicely thanks.’ Lit up and blew the smoke over Stuart. ‘They never got on, he wanted a son and barely spoke to her towards the end. Certainly not after what happened at Christmas.’
She never told us what happened at Christmas; in fact Mrs Schwartz hardly said another word. As Stuart so eloquently put it on the drive back into Reading, ‘What a cold faced bitch.’
Teddy - 1980
She was easy to find.
Telephone book.
Not many people called Catmore.
S.
Catmore.
Six Elms Cottages.
His breathing became short and irregular. As he dialled the number, his lungs stopped functioning completely.
The phone was picked up quickly, three rings then a breathless word. ‘Don. Is that you?’
Who the fucks Don?
He held his breath.
‘Don – I need to see you.’
He placed the receiver back in the cradle. Turned slowly and pushed the telephone booth’s door open.
No.
Turn, quickly this time and dial the number again.
Two rings and pick up.
‘Hello.’
‘Shirley?’
Nothing. Apart from a sharp intake of breath.
‘I need to see you.’
‘Teddy?’
‘Can we meet up somewhere?’
‘Is that you Teddy?’
He forced himself to say nothing.
‘I’ve missed you. How are you, I’m sorry about your…’
‘Don’t talk about her.’
‘I’m shopping in Oxford tomorrow, can we…?’
His breathing turned into short sharp gasps.
‘I’ve still got your letter.’
The line went quiet.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘I meant every word.’
‘Was the baby…?’
‘I had a terrible time of it, but I had a boy. He’s been in a lot of trouble.’
‘Like father, like…’
‘Don’t Teddy.’
‘Where in Oxford?’
He leant against the door of the phone box. The sweat pumped out of his forehead. The same emotion that she always induced.
Fuck her or punch her between the eyes?
Decisions, decisions.
Fight or fuck? Fuck or fight?
Easy, both – eventually.
13
Jack -1945
Half an hour or so after Shirley’s escape, a youngish couple came in – him covered in blood. Her covered in a horror stricken, wide eyed, mouth gaping terror as she screamed and screamed. He shouted for help – I was outside before anyone. Two young men, one face down, the other on his back. One with blood gurgling from somewhere. The one on his back had a gashing, gaping slash across his throat and what remained of the blood in his body trickled gently into the gutter. A mocking contrast to the act of terrible violence that caused it.
It started to rush up from deep inside me. I turned and leant against the wall and retched and retched and retched. A rib twisting, vomiting tribute to what I had just seen. I heard Harry’s voice, ‘Fucking hell.’
I watched him rush back into the club; I told the man who would have normally been on the door to ring the police. So that’s negotiating – a mutually acceptable face saver for Teddy. A sacrifice for both Wyn and Shirley’s good looks. I leant against the door, my chest wouldn’t work. I couldn’t drag air into my lungs. My temples pounded with a steam hammer inside trying to smash its way out from within. My shirt soaked in sweat and vomit.
Harry came bursting out like a greyhound chasing the hare. Staring, trying to get a fix on an opponent that was nowhere to be seen.
‘They’ve gone and you don’t even know where he lives.’
‘I’ll find him.’
‘I don’t think you will.’ Safe somewhere – surrounded by his goons. Bragging how he stuck it to the two Welshmen. Well stuck it to the doormen anyway, a mutual back patting orgy as they drank and laughed and toasted good old Teddy.
You should have seen the way they bled.
Harry’s chin dropped onto his chest, ‘What the fuck have we started?’
Something we can’t finish I guessed, in way over our heads. Directed by two people that thought Teddy was a soft target. Intellectually he may have been, sly probably. Street wise definitely, but the message sent our way couldn’t have been clearer in my mind. This is coming your way of you cross me again. This is coming your way even if you don’t cross me again.
We looked at one another and the same thought fired between us.
How do we get out of this?
‘Have all the games stopped?’
Wyn nodded, ‘There’s no one left inside – all crashed out the back way. That includes staff as well. All the muscle, everyone.’
We talked, most of the time we just sat and drank. The way you can sometimes drink and it has no effect. Little taste either – a pointless exercise, but despite this, we drank the night away. Trying to forget, exorcise a few demons. Stay awake until day break and with it relative safety of sunlight. Not that we were in any immediate danger, the all clear signal had metaphorically sounded as it were. But I needed sunlight and the safety that went with it.
*****
I tried to sleep in one of the upstairs rooms, recently inhabited I guessed from the heavy smell of sex hanging like a heavy fog in the air. The thought of lying on a sheet swimming in another man’s semen yet another reason for staying awake. So I planned and schemed away, I just dreamed of doing something that would put Teddy inside and make me some money at the same time. No one gets hurt, everyone’s happy. Apart from Teddy – but he deserves everything that comes his way. I sat and schemed, but whichever way I squirmed, fear tempered my every move. A childhood spent avoiding confrontation and I thought that I would never change the habit of a lifetime.
An unhappy child, the worst thing I could have done was win a scholarship to Chiswick grammar school. I had stood out amongst my peers before this, watching football and not playing. Staring at the play fights, running away from the bigger boys. Then suddenly dressed in a blazored school uniform effectively stamped a bull’s-eye between my shoulder blades. I stayed in and read a lot, learnt my Latin and even my parents were worried about the prodigy amongst their midst. Dad had saved and sweated to get me through university, the war meant that his money stayed in the bank.
They still expected me to go when the war ended, but by then I had learnt how to drink whilst nominally tracking deserting spivs. Spent hours watching one flogging watches and anything else he managed t
o hide in his poachers pockets of his capacious raincoat. I got to know him well; he had an eye for painted ladies and young men. I didn’t think he was queer, but he enjoyed young men’s company nonetheless. We talked often and I liked him, amusing and arrogant in equal measures. Conceited with a nice line in self-depreciation and I enjoyed this dichotomy in his character. He bought plenty of beer as well, a habit that was going to stay with me forever, I suppose I have to thank him for that at least.
When I mentioned university he sucked his breath in and shook his head. ‘No, no – a bright young boy like you – why waste three years when you can live the good life.’
Something my parents never knew, my choice of career had been directed by a spiv. However, for the first time in my life I felt comfortable, enjoying playing at being part of military intelligence. Looking for deserters whilst mixing in the murky world of the spiv and the desperate lives of those on the run. I sat in pub corners and watched, blaming these early years for my voyeurism that I enjoyed so much in my middle years. Never a true voyeur, but comfortable listening into other peoples conversations. Vaguely excited by their changing expressions and if I couldn’t hear what was being said then I imagined. This did thrill me as my thoughts ran wild, often way off the mark with my uncontrolled guessing.
Now I had a real scheme to concoct and one that gave me a chance for revenge. For someone that had no real emotions – I suddenly discovered hate in a big way. Hating Teddy gave me a heavy beer drinker’s thirst for retribution. But I had also discovered haters block. Revenge blocked my thought process, a huge some of what might well turn out to be imaginary money dangled away in front of me. Tantalus and temptation without satisfaction teased away in front of my nose. I imagined all of the money apparently within easy reach.
I thought of something Shirley had said to me, ‘You live in a dream world Jack.’ I said nothing, happy to stare back and wait for her to probe away at me some more.
I awoke and stared out at a grey dawn, mist over the river. A discrete knock on the door, not the Gestapo rattling knock that meant interrogation, torture and a painful death.
‘Good morning – a nice morning.’ I think Wyn felt that he had to pretend that a certain normalcy needed to be preserved.
‘Is it?’
Wyn slipped his arm around my shoulder, ‘Listen – the police gave us a hard time after you’d gone. Effectively closed us down, confined us to barracks as well.’ Wyn nodded towards his brother. ‘Harry – we’re slipping out the back, you can stay here it’s as safe as houses. Two policeman on permanent guardsman duties.’
‘I want to come with you two.’ Translated into plain English, I needed to stay as close to Harry as possible.
Wyn slapped me on the back, ‘Good man – have a wash, get dressed, we’ll sneak out the back and collect our winnings.’
*****
Harry was dressed for business. Like his brother, a smart suit and tie. From behind they looked like a pair of silver backed gorillas wearing jackets. We taxied and walked our way around the city. I imagined being pushed into a car and whisked away to the marshes or somewhere up Epping way and a gangster’s assassination. Wyn’s features indicated sadness, brown skinned and always attentive. Eternally optimistic and never expecting disappointment. Soberly dressed, sober and sombre. Browns and dark green the order of the day.
The streets smelled of urine, fried onions from the restaurants and fruit from the street market. Cool in the shade of the buildings. I glanced behind.
Anyone following?
Possibly my last day for this world and I followed them like a spaniel. A supposedly intelligent man offering himself up for sacrifice. Wyn glanced at his watch – mustn’t be late. He bought some fruit, the weather beaten market woman, head scarf wrapped resolutely around her like a mummy. Her glance suspicious.
Little queer boys out early today.
One maybe.
A normal enough morning, I watched a driver asleep in a parked taxi. Harry’s eyes alert, but still the darkness underneath that contradicted his bluff demeanour. Wyn smiled and said good morning to every woman we passed. Shirley told me that he liked to talk. Relaxed in women’s company, he liked to make them laugh. An undemanding man in many ways, yet the face of a survivor. Astute and happy to humiliate others and probably a little cruel at times. All this and a survivor too.
My thoughts raced all over the place and he smiled up at me. Here we are in Wyn’s dangerous world and he faced it head on. All of the girls liked Wyn, despite him making life unbearable for them sometimes. They liked him and he liked women. I didn’t know if he slept with any of them.
A big black Vauxhall crawled past us, usually I felt more comfortable out on the street. But I had begun to fear abduction and I switched places with Harry. He could walk on the outside. Wyn’s eyebrows came up a touch.
You’ve got it bad.
I had become a skilful reader of expressions. I knew what people were thinking.
We walked mostly, sometimes took a cab, we made contact with bookmaker after bookmaker. I had written addresses and names and prices and wagers down when we placed all the bets. Sometimes we spoke, once Wyn said. ‘You’ve not got a girlfriend – have you?’
I shook my head, ‘Why?’
‘No reason, just that men in that position are sometimes not especially careful with their lives.’
Wyn was right; I had nothing binding me to this life, except life itself. Consequences concerned me though. ‘I’m not about to do anything silly if that’s what you mean.’
Wyn stopped and stared at me, weighing me up, making the calculations. ‘It’s a bit late for me to say that you don’t have to become embroiled in all of this.’ His left arm made a sweeping gesture at the world around both of us. ‘You can walk away whenever …’ Wyn shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
The sun suddenly peeped over the top of the buildings, comfortably enveloped in the early morning warmth. I had been drawn in to a situation that I couldn’t hope to comprehend. I didn’t need some sort of imperious sixth sense to realise that something awful was close to hand. My turn to shrug, ‘The deeds done – almost and we all want to get away. Let’s hope we can make a safe escape.’
On we walked, narrow streets choked with people milling this way and that. Street vendors, spivs selling from a suitcase. Women carrying bread and fruit, old men sat staring endlessly at anything that moved. Eventually we stopped for a drink and as we walked through the door, heads pivoted our way. Harry went up to the bar and I slumped into a chair. My own instinct for survival nowhere to be seen, the usual pub smells, tobacco and this early in the morning, stale beer, wood smoke and shepherd’s pie warming on a hotplate.
Wyn moaned about not being able to get a coffee, sipping at his fruit juice rather like a gazelle at a water hole.
Danger – let’s not dwell here.
The beer helped me, halfway down and emboldened. Whistling by the time we started walking again. The world no longer dangerous, the beer had changed that.
Late afternoon before our tour of London’s bookmakers over. We found a dingy club with music and sat, all of us exhausted. The quality of the cabaret had a certain value that made it unmissable. Especially when my mood had slumped again after the momentary lift from the beer. We sat and smoked steadily and I drank quickly. The seven piece band, combined age of over four hundred years at a guess. Rehearsing and did they need the practise. A bass player with dead eyes, a pianist with, by the sound of it, four or five fingers missing. An emphysemic trumpeter and a half decent singer. The youngster of the group, just over forty and to round it off, a man in a dark blue dinner jacket and the whitest face in Christendom. I couldn’t work out what he played.
‘Let’s get back to the club.’
Wyn brought his stare quickly over to me,
I make the decisions.
I lowered my gaze, my insubordination over for the day. We watched a plump girl touting away. Wyn said, ‘Not red hot and skinny how I like them, but a
plump little madam. She pouts and brushes her hair back with her hand. Whinging for the good things, not like Shirley who wants nothing.’
Harry shook his head and shouted, ‘She’ll bleed you dry, suck ten years off you.’
Wyn’s eyebrows came up as he said, ‘There’s worse ways to go.’
We sat and felt the staring eyes coming our way.
Harry raised his glass, ‘Fuck Teddy.’ Then he stared into his beer, ‘This tastes like swamp water as well.’ He frowned towards the barman. ‘Couldn’t keep decent beer if his life depended on it, I’m going to tell him.’
My mind screamed low profile please, no trouble this far from home.
I watched, Harry sat on a spare stool at the bar – smiled at the barman and said something. The barman’s expression froze, he said nothing just carried on wiping the same glass he had been for the last five minutes. Harry pointed and I thought I heard Teddy Lewis mentioned. The previously expressionless barman told Harry to fuck off and called him a nosey cunt.
Whereupon he found himself being dragged over his own counter and then shaken rather like an imperfectly packed bale of straw. This way and then the other – a rat in a terrier’s tightly clamped jaws. More words were exchanged before Harry gently placed the rat back on his feet.
A few of the locals got Harry’s scowl and he sauntered back and sat down alongside me. He smiled away, but said nothing. He did this when he had something of interest to say.
‘What did he tell you?’ I asked, quickly tiring of his little game.
‘Told me not to go back to the club.’ Harry sprawled back into his chair, elbow on the table, large hand propped his head. One eye open as he said. ‘Let’s just clear off.’
I said, ‘Somewhere a bit quieter.’ A bit safer was what I wanted to say – dignity dictated that I preserve some element of bravery about my persona. We drank up and headed back, a suitcase full of money.
Teddy - 1945
This was the moment – as the picture appeared in his mind he and he scowled at the image presented.