Out of the Blackout

by Robert Barnard

  Perhaps there were more photographs elsewhere? He rummaged through the drawers of the sideboard: bills, account books, cheap rubber stamps that printed ‘Received with thanks’, some newspaper clippings on Rent Acts and the rights of landlords and tenants. All of these were the impedimenta of the Simmeters’ petty capitalism. In the big cupboard at the bottom were piled parts of a heavy and hideous dinner service, in a design of dark green leaves and claret-coloured flowers. There were heavy cut-glass jugs and bowls, a set of fish-knives and forks, and a large Bible on the shelf above. It was under the Bible that Simon found the photograph album.

  It was a heavy, brown volume, with dark brown pages, probably bought in the ’twenties or ’thirties. As he picked it up, Simon felt sure he was going to be disappointed. It was too light—hardly used. The Simmeters were not camera buffs, and he never would have expected them to be. Their secretiveness would see the camera as an invader rather than as a recorder. Only the first ten or fifteen pages of the album were used, and even on them there were places where photographs had been torn out. Why? Which were these? Simon was willing to bet they were records of Len’s activities that he had rushed to obliterate as soon as war broke out.

  The figures in the snapshots stared at him, mostly unsmiling. A younger Mrs Simmeter, massive and ramrod-straight, caught on the promenade of some resort, and again on a deckchair on a beach. She seemed determined to record for posterity that she, at least, had gained no pleasure from that particular jaunt. Mary Simmeter, clad for summer, on another sea-front, smiling—shyly, uncertainly, as if she were trying to do what was expected of her. Len, in decorously capacious swimming trunks, faking carefree pleasure by the waves. Later there were other members of the family: Teddy in the uniform of the Boy Scouts; Mary beside her father (gaunt, patriarchal, a right tartar); the young Connie in a sleeveless floral dress. It was Simon’s first glimpse, this last, of what Connie had looked like when young. Her blonde hair was carefully waved around a pretty face—the face made up, the general effect clearly the result of effort and attention. Though the young Teddy in RAF uniform presented an attractive enough figure, Connie was the only Simmeter who could be described as good-looking. She gazed out of the photograph as if she knew it, and was only waiting for an opportunity to use her looks. There was something slyly provocative about her expression: ‘I’m going to show you,’ she seemed to be saying.

  Simon shut the book, vaguely dissatisfied. He looked around the room, wondering where there might be secrets. He opened drawers, pulled down flaps, rummaged. Nothing of interest. Then a thought occurred to him. This room held, for the most part, the present-day life of the Simmeters, their concerns of the moment, such as they were. But what he was after was a quarter of a century old, and the photograph album was the only thing in this room that held memories of so far back. However real the period was beginning to become to him, it was old history to the Simmeters. Might it not be in the dining-room—so far as Simon knew, hardly ever used—that such memories might be put in cold storage? He left the living-room, went down the passage, and turned on the light in the dining-room.

  Deep frozen, Simon decided, might be a better expression than cold storage. On that September night, after a mild day, the room had a damp chill, and a stillness that was not peaceful, merely lifeless. Nothing had been done here for years, nothing had happened. Even the petty frustrations and jealousies of the living-room had not penetrated here. The room was dead—impeccably dusted, but dead.

  Even the light was dim. Simon peered around in the gloom. The furniture was predictably unattractive: a heavy table, its legs much afflicted with the knobs and goitres that characterized English middle-class furniture of the period; four chairs neatly drawn up to the sides; an ancient piano in a wood the colour of diarrhoea. It looked as if it had not been touched for decades, and Simon could imagine its hollow-sounding tones, hideously out of key. On a small table beside it, a wind-up gramophone, and on a shelf underneath it a pile of 78 r.p.m. records. Simon did not examine them, for fear they included Dame Clara Butt singing Land of Hope and Glory.

  And that was all, more or less. Except that under the window (whose curtains, Simon had noticed from the road, were perpetually drawn) was one of those little tables about the purpose of which one could only speculate. It was too small to eat off or write on, too tall to serve as an occasional table. It was less bulbous than most of the Simmeters’ furniture but (like them) it had no kind of grace. But it did have drawers. It was the only place in this desert of a room where any kind of personal memento might be kept. Simon, nevertheless, went over to it with no sense of expectation.

  The contents were a series of envelopes. The top one was marked MY WILL, with the signature Flora Jane Simmeter. Not unexpectedly, it was sealed. Underneath it was PERSONAL DOCUMENTS, with a note saying, ‘Birth, Marriage, Death’. It too was sealed. But the envelope under that—containing nothing official, or, who knows, being looked at more often—was unsealed. It was labelled MARY’S LETTERS TO ME, with the initials L.S. in the bottom right-hand corner.

  Simon, his heart beating, turned the envelope over and took the letters out. There were only three. One was dated late 1930, and seemed to be from the period of their engagement. Mary was with her father at Leamington Spa, staying with an aunt. She agreed with Len that 11.30 on February 22nd was a very suitable time, and said her father would be arranging the details of the reception on his return to London. There were no expressions of affection beyond the ‘love, Mary’ at the bottom of the page. The second letter, undated, found Mary staying with the same aunt, who seemed to have been in service, and who was now ill. Mary assured Len (who had obviously been nagging at her) that she would not overdo things in her condition, said what worrying times these were to bring a new soul into the world, and said she’d be back on Saturday without fail.

  It was the last letter in this meagre collection that interested Simon the most. It was written on two sheets of very poor notepaper—the lined sort, made even shabbier-looking by wartime paper restrictions. Yet from it came some faint air of the real woman who had been Mary Simmeter.

  27th February 1941

  14 Blenheim Ave,

  Cattermole,

  Sussex

  Dear Len,

  I am staying with the Templetons at the above address, it is a nice place and they seem very nice people, but they are old, is it right to send a little boy to such old people? Davey is so very small he needs people who can play with him and be with him all the time, thats what I think anyway. Mrs T has arthuritus and could not look after his clothes in the way you and I would wish. But if he must come its very quiet here, almost countryside, and I will be happy to have him away from all the bombs and that, its been like Hell these last months, and I know its affected you though I dont want to talk about that. If only I could be with him Len, but you dont want that, and of course it would be hard on you, but youd have your mother. Also the Templetons want £2 per week, could we afford that? It is awful to think I might not be able to visit very often, what with the raids and all the restrictions. I do hope you will think again and let me come with him, at least for a few weeks if not longer. I could even get a job, it would help, and there is a call for domestic servants, so many doing war work. I will try and get the train on Thursday morning, but heaven knows when it will get to Charring Cross, remembering the journey down, it was a nightmare, it took nearly five hours. Give my love and a hug to Davey. Tell mother I will try to get her some nice cakes, also some ham, I know she likes it, food is more plentiful here. My love to Connie and Ted. See you some time on Thursday, God willing.

  Your loving wife,

  Mary

  Simon stood there, the letter in his hand. Then he read it over again. Something—some attenuated shade—came to him of the loving, put-upon, tenacious little woman who had been Len’s wife and his own mother. It struggled up through the uncertain orthography, the stiff phraseology of a woman unused to writing letters. But it wasn’t just that. T
his woman was one who had had little experience of putting forward her wishes openly, of expecting to be listened to. She was making her views clear now only because what she loved most was threatened. She was summoning up her strength because her whole world revolved around the child. Make demands she could not, but what limited fight she could put up to stay with him she was determined to make. In the end, Simon feared, she was a woman who would do what she was told, however heart-wrenching that proved to be, because doing what she was told had been her lot throughout life. A good woman, a strong-principled one, but almost certainly one of life’s losers.

  ‘Well!’ came the voice of Connie Simmeter from the door. ‘You are showing an interest in our affairs, aren’t you?’

  CHAPTER 14

  Simon stood there in suspended animation, the letter still clutched in his hand. His mind seemed to be working furiously, independent of him, ticking over with calculations in which he himself scarcely seemed involved. The first conclusion that the process led to was that this was the beginning of the end. Now things had to come out into the open. His days at the Simmeters’, as he had already begun to foresee, were numbered. ‘This is it,’ his brain said.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Connie, her voice more amused than accusing, ‘we have a spy in our midst. It makes a break in the monotony, come to think about it. But what on earth could you be interested in? Wills? Why would you bother with who gets what in the Simmeter family? Mind you, I did rather wonder when you got friendly with Len. No one—just no one—gets friendly with Len. Were you hoping to worm your way into his confidence? His affections—God help you? Take the place of the son he lost? I can’t see why you’d bother—you with a good job and prospects. It just doesn’t seem worth your while.’

  Simon remained fixed to the spot, staring at Connie. She, on the other hand, was leaning relaxedly against the door. Her face was redder than usual, and from her handbag there protruded the neck of a bottle. She had commandeered Teddy’s whisky, to sustain her at the hospital.

  ‘Lost your tongue?’ Connie resumed. ‘I warn you, you haven’t got long. Len remembered as they were wheeling her into the Emergency Ward that he hadn’t locked up. As our Len was bound to. He sent me back to do it. If I’m not back at the hospital soon he’ll imagine I’ve been raped by burglars or something, and come back to see what’s going on. It’s only ten minutes away, as perhaps you didn’t know. So you’d better give me your story, because, I tell you, Len would be quite capable of calling the police.’

  Simon took his decision.

  ‘I’m trying to find out why Len murdered his wife,’ he said.

  Now the silence in the room was total. Simon’s body gradually relaxed its rigidity. It almost felt as if things were out of his hands. There seemed, when the remark sank in, no diminution in Connie’s amiability: on the contrary, on consideration she seemed rather to relish the situation. Pursing her mouth in amused contemplation, she walked over to a cabinet, took out two tumblers, and poured a finger of whisky each for Simon and herself. She brought Simon’s over, looked at the letter he was holding in his hand, and then sat herself down unceremoniously on one of the dining chairs.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said, still smiling and swilling the whisky around in her glass. ‘After all these years.’

  Simon looked at her, faintly repelled by her coolness.

  ‘You’re not denying she was murdered?’

  She waved his words aside with a pudgy hand.

  ‘Wait . . . wait . . . I’m trying to think who you are. Not police, of course. I can’t really believe in the file kept open for decades. Quite apart from the fact that there never was a file. Nobody had any doubts—no serious ones. There were more than enough other things for them to worry about at the time. But who could you be? . . . I’ve got it! The Spurlings! Mary’s people.’ Simon allowed himself to smile ambiguously. ‘You’re a cut above them, in looks and everything else, I’ll give you that. I never could abide that narrow-minded lot—and they certainly didn’t approve of me. After Mary’s father died we never had much contact with them. They never came round to our place. But Mary visited them, of course—she was the baby of the family, they loved her. Who had children about your age? Most of the older brothers and sisters had had their families and done with it by the time Mary was married. So they’d be older. But there was Enid, wasn’t there? The next oldest sister. That would be it. You’d be—what?—twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? You must be one of Enid’s. Well I never! To think they had their suspicions, and held on to them all these years!’

  Simon kept his eyes on her, but she did not abate her high good humour. She sipped from her glass, apparently with added relish. Simon said again:

  ‘So you don’t deny she was murdered?’

  ‘Oh, murder,’ said Connie dismissively. ‘I’m no friend to Len, but I wouldn’t call it that. And I don’t think the law would either. What’s that other word? Manslaughter. I should have thought that even the police, if they’d ever been involved, would have called it manslaughter. And, not wishing to say a good word for Len (which I’ve had no cause to do for many years) still, I do understand how it happened. I was always very fond of Mary, but I do think there are some women who actually invite violence. The submissive type, you know.’

  She said it complacently, in a way that angered Simon.

  ‘They only invite violence if they come up against someone who’s inclined to violence. Like Len.’

  ‘Like Len. Well, that’s as maybe. There’s a bit of violence in all of us, isn’t there? I know I could have slapped her silly face now and then, when she used to look at me dumbly, trying to tell me what my duty was. The funny thing is, I believe in the first years of their marriage they were reasonably happy. Not unhappy, anyway. I left home soon after they got spliced, and I didn’t go back till ’thirty-nine, but from what I saw on visits they jogged along perfectly comfortably. Len was pleasant enough, as long as she did what he told her. But I’d not deny Len’s got a lot of violence bottled up there.’

  ‘Which he mostly got rid of in these rallies and demonstrations, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh—you know about all that, do you? What I call Len’s comic opera side. Well, I suppose you would, of course. The Spurlings never did approve of that. It was all Church with your family, and the Mosleyites were never what you’d call respectable. Len took up with them soon after the marriage, and I think old man Spurling (your granddad) bitterly regretted arranging the marriage. Len became a lot too notorious locally for his liking. When you go in for that sort of politics you can’t be tactful about it, or keep quiet. Len thought he was part of the wave of the future—poor bugger!—and he proclaimed it from the roof-tops every chance he got. Yes, I suppose you could say he got rid of most of his violence that way.’

  ‘Only when war came, that outlet was stopped.’

  ‘You know, I’d never thought of it in that light, but perhaps you’re right. Mary copped it because Len couldn’t go goose-stepping through the streets of Paddington.’

  To Simon, standing over her, the cool-blooded acquiescence of Connie Simmeter in Mary’s fate was almost painful. A smile had been playing around her face since she sat down, and it had now expanded into a richly reminiscent, cat-like expression, wreathing her face in what might be mistaken for good humour.

  ‘Watching Len when the war broke out was a real treat. It was the best revenge I could have had. Half the time he’d be rubbing his hands—you know how he does—and I knew he was thinking that within weeks the Germans would be here. Only he never said so, of course. Just hugged to himself his little vision of what he would be then—the glorious position his faith and loyalty would win for him. But then the rest of the time . . . ’

  ‘He was scared stiff?’ hazarded Simon.

  ‘Right. Because there was the here and now, wasn’t there? Len was the sort who’d never be able to decide to have an operation to save himself pain in the future. When he wasn’t thinking of the glorious prospect of Gauleiter Simmeter
, he was off his head with fear about what the authorities might do to him before the liberating Boche arrived. Oh, it was comic! It was rich!’

  She giggled, quite unconscious of the effect her relish was having on her audience.

  ‘It sounds really nasty,’ said Simon.

  ‘Not to me. I fuelled it. I just liked sitting there watching him. I’d say: “I see the Mail says they should round up all the Fascists as well as the aliens.” Len would jump half a foot, and say: “That’s rich. Rothermere was always one of our best supporters.” And I’d say: “That’s why he’s so keen to make it hot for you, I suppose.” ’

  ‘What was it he was afraid of?’

  ‘I don’t suppose he exactly knew. Some pretty nasty things happened to suspected German sympathizers in the first war. Internment was the immediate fear. They rounded up all sorts—refugees from Hitler, Jews and that, ordinary Germans who’d been here for years, Nazi sympathizers—and they cooped them all up together . . . And sometimes they shipped them off: Canada, Australia, God knows where. One of the boats was sunk. That terrified Len.’

  ‘I believe Len was taken in for questioning.’

  ‘That’s right. You have done your homework. The authorities were on to all the right-wing groups from quite early in the war. It was just questioning then. Len was taken in, and of course he told them that, like his Leader, he was praying for an English victory; that as soon as the chips were down he was an Englishman before all else; that the Mosleyites were in fact super-patriots, and no one could touch them for enthusiasm for the war. That was their line, I believe.’