The following morning, Blunderbuss Beryl took a phone call from Mr Saunders, the constituency’s MP.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I believe you’ve had words with our Young Socialists secretary, Paul Adams.’
‘The squirt pinched my office chair.’
‘You’ve got it back?’
‘You bet I’ve got it back, after a lot of sauce, impertinence and too much bloody heave-ho, and I’m arranging for Adams to be replaced.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘Mr Saunders—’
‘Don’t do it.’
‘But your daughter can have the job.’
‘My daughter doesn’t want the job under those kind of circumstances.’
‘Listen, Mr Saunders, I’m objecting to this conversation.’
‘Object all you like, there’s two sides to any argument unless the other bloke’s a Tory. Adams keeps the job. He’s good at it, he’s increasing the membership week by week, and every member is a guaranteed Labour Party voter. That’s all, thanks. Good morning.’
Mr Saunders didn’t inform Paul of this. Lulu had said she’d disown him if he did. What happened was that one of Blunderbuss Beryl’s hunched underlings brought a scrawled note down to Paul.
‘You’re reprieved, but don’t do it again.’ It was signed by Beryl.
‘Look at that,’ said Paul, handing the note to Lulu, who read it.
‘Lucky old ratbag, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Blunderbuss must have bumped into my fairy godmother,’ said Paul.
‘Don’t suppose your fairy godmother thought much of that,’ said Lulu, presently revising the list of members.
‘Much of what?’ asked Paul.
‘Being bumped into by half a ton of plum duff,’ said Lulu.
Paul yelled with laughter.
‘Lulu, you made a funny,’ he said.
‘Pardon me, I’m sure,’ said Lulu.
‘There’ll be quite a few letters for you to type this afternoon,’ said Paul.
‘Give ’em to your fairy godmother,’ said Lulu. ‘I’ll still be busy.’ Paul let that go. A minute later, she said, ‘By the way, you never told me what tarty Henrietta talked to you about.’
‘Oh, some project concerning a home for lonely old maiden ladies,’ said Paul.
‘Oh, my word, dearie me, how sweet,’ said Lulu. ‘And what help will you give?’
‘Well, for a start,’ said Paul, ‘she thinks we could do a lot together at weekends.’
‘Not for the old ladies. No, I bet not. The mind boggles.’
‘At what?’
‘At what you’ll look like on Monday mornings.’
‘Lulu, you’re in form today,’ said Paul. ‘Listen, I’ve got a letter here from a Left-wing church deacon. He wants me to join him on a soapbox at Speakers Corner one Sunday and address the crowd on Jesus as the first Socialist.’
‘The mind boggles,’ muttered Lulu, and used a savage blue pencil to cross out the name of a defector who hadn’t and wouldn’t renew his subscription. The soft lead broke.
‘The invitation doesn’t include her,’ said Paul.
‘Weekends do. Sundays are a part of every weekend.’
It was lunchtime when Ma Earnshaw turned to serve her next customer, a man who had been waiting in the background until the stall was clear, when he made a quick approach.
‘Hello again, Ma,’ he said.
‘Well, if it ain’t yerself again, Boots dearie,’ said Ma. ‘It’s a real pleasure. I hear about the family from Cassie Brown now and then, here and there, like. What can I get yer, love?’
‘First, you remember when I brought Sammy’s girls and my twins to see you?’ said Boots.
‘Lovely surprise, that was,’ said Ma.
‘After we left, you served a woman, a blonde woman. D’you remember that too?’
‘Course I do. She’s one of me Polish customers, Mrs Kloytski,’ said Ma. ‘She buys a lot of apples, spuds and cabbages, which she said last week she makes sauerkraut with. I dunno why them Poles eat stuff like that, and have names like that.’
‘D’you know where she lives?’ asked Boots.
‘Here, wait a tick,’ said Ma, ‘that’s a bit odd. I mean, she’s been on at me lately about people asking after her. Only yesterday she said her lost brother might just come looking for her. You ain’t her lost brother, are yer, Boots? She said to let her know quick if anyone at all asked after her. I didn’t think you’d be one.’
Lost brother my elbow, thought Boots. There’s a woman who’s been on the run, and still has something to worry about, even though she’s parked herself in London with her husband.
‘I need to find her, Ma,’ he said. ‘I can’t explain right now. Simply, do you know where she lives?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s Wansey Street, but I don’t know what number,’ said Ma. ‘But yer family friends, Cassie and Freddy Brown, they live in Wansey Street.’
A customer arrived.
‘Good enough, Ma,’ said Boots.
‘Can I serve yer something now?’ asked Ma. ‘Here’s two quid,’ said Boots, fishing the notes out of his wallet. ‘Make up a box of fruit and let the Salvation Army have it for one of their hostels.’
‘I’ll do that,’ said Ma. ‘You’re a good bloke, Boots, you always was, and a gent as well. Mind, you’ve got me wondering about Mrs—’
But Boots was away through the market crowds, and Ma turned to her customer.
Cassie, answering the knock on her front door, found Boots on her step. Cassie, fond of the Adams family, was particularly fond of Boots and his younger brother Sammy.
‘Well, look who’s here,’ she said, her smile rich with pleasure, a decorated apron over her turquoise blue dress. ‘Boots, you look as if you’ve been in the sun for ages.’
‘Cornish holiday, and hello to you, Cassie,’ said Boots. He had a soft spot for Cassie, wife of Susie’s brother Freddy. Thirty-three now, she still projected a hint of teasing mischief, the kind that had driven Freddy dotty during their growing years together. ‘How are you?’
‘Hot,’ said Cassie, ‘I’m ironing yesterday’s washing, and that’s hot all right in August. Still, Freddy does like his nicely ironed shirts. You’ll come in, won’t you, Boots? Muffin and Lewis are out with friends.’
‘Thanks,’ said Boots, stepping in. Cassie closed the door and took him into the front room which, like most front rooms in Walworth, was still known as the parlour. Boots noted the clean, tidy look of the room and the obvious use of furniture polish. On the piano stood a large framed photograph of Cassie and Freddy on their wedding day. On the window ledge were pots of African violets in flower. Boots could recognize any parlour that knew the care and attention of a Walworth housewife.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Boots, and something to eat?’ asked Cassie. It was lunchtime, and she was going to do a light meal for herself and the children in fifteen minutes.
‘Thank you, Cassie, but no,’ said Boots, ‘I’ll catch a pub sandwich and a beer a little later. But it’s good to see you, Cassie, and I know Freddy’s doing well at the store.’
‘Oh, you and Sammy gave him a nice job there, Boots,’ said Cassie.
‘Freddy’s always given of his best for the firm,’ said Boots, and came to the point of his call. ‘Cassie, do you have a neighbour called Mrs Kloytski?’
‘Not half I do,’ said Cassie, ‘but I’m not sure I like her. The blessed woman’s got a fancy for Freddy, and her at her age. She must be all of ten years older.’
‘What’s the number of her house?’ asked Boots.
‘Twenty-three,’ said Cassie. ‘A few doors down, next to Mr and Mrs Hobday. And you’ve got me curious. She’s Polish, Boots, and so’s her husband. And he’s a cool one all right for a Pole.’
‘Cool?’ said Boots.
‘As handsome as Cary Grant,’ said Cassie, ‘and ever so friendly, only when he smiles it’s not like a real smile. It’s sort of cool and his eyes look rig
ht through you. Mrs Kloytski now, when she smiles she kind of embraces you. She’s always smiling at Freddy and trying to get her bosom closer to his chest. Freddy says he’s going to undo her buttons one day and see what all the fuss is about.’ Cassie laughed. ‘He’d do it too, he came out of Burma a lot tougher, Boots, only he knows I’d hit him with a saucepan if he did.’
‘Seeing what all the fuss is about could call the lady’s bluff,’ smiled Boots.
‘Give her a thrill, more like,’ said Cassie. ‘When I was talking to my dad about her, he said she was probably what was known as a voluptuous woman. Well, you should have heard what mum said to that, including telling him she wasn’t going to have those kind of words used in her house, especially in front of an innocent daughter. Me, the innocent daughter, Boots.’ Cassie laughed again.
‘Innocent daughters, Cassie, grow up like the rest of us, but I’m never sure if some fathers wouldn’t prefer them to stay young and innocent for ever,’ said Boots.
‘Is that what you’d prefer for Gemma?’ asked Cassie.
‘Shouldn’t we all allow our children to choose their own way of life?’ said Boots.
‘But we’ve got to give them some guidance,’ said Cassie.
‘Yes, so we have,’ said Boots, and spent a few moments reflecting on that which was foremost in his mind. The woman and her husband, both said to be Polish. If her husband really was Polish, did he know she wasn’t? As a Pole he should know. ‘This woman Mrs Kloytski, what’s her husband’s job, Cassie?’
‘Oh, he works mostly at home, writing articles for a Polish newspaper, and going up to town to meet other Poles,’ said Cassie. ‘He’s got a phone. Freddy’s arranging for us to have one, which I said wasn’t before time. Boots, I’m just bursting with curiosity.’
‘Well, don’t go off bang, Cassie,’ said Boots, ‘none of us want to lose you. Hang on for a while, and then perhaps some news will come your way and satisfy your curiosity. Thanks for your time and our chat. I must go now.’
‘Boots, it’s been lovely seeing you,’ said Cassie, ‘and all the best to Polly and the twins.’
‘Come and have Sunday tea with us, you and Freddy and your children,’ said Boots. ‘I’ll ask Polly to get in touch with you about the date.’
‘Boots, we’d love that,’ said Cassie, and tingled when he gave her a goodbye kiss.
Farther along the street, Mr and Mrs Kloytski were eating lunch, a large dish of sauerkraut being the mainstay.
Boots, on his way to the Walworth Road and a pub, suddenly thought about the sauerkraut that Ma Earnshaw had mentioned. Did Poles like it as much as Germans did?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mrs Rachel Goodman, a forty-seven-year-old widow, was as well preserved as Susie and Polly. A strikingly beautiful Jewess in her younger years, lush in her vivid looks, she had avoided the traditional foods that were so appealing to her race, but could be fattening. She had a decided horror of being called fat by Sammy. Not that he would in bald terms, not Sammy, the dear man. He’d make do with something like, ‘Hello, Rachel me old lollipop, you’ve been eating well lately, I see.’
No-one knew that since the age of fifteen she had been in love with Sammy the irrepressible, or that only her affection for and her dutiful attitude towards her gentle-mannered father would have prevented her converting to the Christian faith if Sammy had asked her to marry him. Sammy, however, had never thought of subverting her faith, and so she did the dutiful thing and married Benjamin Goodman, an up-and-coming bookmaker and a fine man in many ways. She had lost him when he died of a heart attack during the war. She put that down to the time when, as an ARP warden, he had entered a bombed house during a German air raid in an attempt to bring out a trapped woman. The trembling house fell on him, and on the woman and another warden. Both Benjamin’s legs had been broken. Rachel was sure the shock, the stress, and the painful road to recovery had weakened his heart.
He had been gone now for several years, leaving her to take care of their two daughters and her widowed father. Her father, ageing but enduring, was still with her. Rebecca, her elder daughter, a university graduate, worked in the research department of an international chemical company in Manchester, where one of the managers, Joseph Symonds, was doing his best to interest her in a wedding ceremony at the city’s main synagogue.
Leah, her younger daughter and such a sweet girl, had done something that delighted Rachel. She had married Edward, the younger son of Sammy’s sister Lizzy, thus allowing Rachel to relate to the extensive Adams family. Rachel, despite the strict tenets of her religion, was enduringly close in every way to this Christian family, to its attitudes, its customs and its patently old-fashioned values. She had a warm affection for Sammy’s mother and her many descendants and in-laws. Further, she and Boots’s wife, the once madcap Polly, had always hit a high note together.
Rachel had been Sammy’s business manager during the latter years of the war, a position she happily relinquished back to Boots when he returned. She was now the secretary of all three companies, Adams Enterprises, Adams Fashions and Adams Properties, and her salary gave her immense pleasure, even if Sammy sometimes said, ‘You sure we’re not paying you twice too much, Rachel?’
Sammy was the driving power of the business, its engine, but Boots, she knew, was the mastermind of its stability. Sammy periodically came up with great ideas, and laid them before Boots and herself with the flourish of finality. But Boots, in his casual but subtle way, would offer a few comments, and those comments would govern the outcome. Rachel loved her job and adored all that Sammy and Boots meant to her working life.
Boots was back after an extended lunch hour. Rachel thought that he and Sammy, so tanned and fit after their time in Cornwall, could put many a Hollywood star in the shade. But I’ll admit it, I’m biased, she told herself. She put her head into Boots’s office.
‘Maggie Collier’s been after you,’ she said, entering. Maggie Collier was chief buyer of women’s clothes for Coates, who had a store in the West End and branches all over South England. Maggie Collier was the post-war replacement for Harriet de Vere, who had suffered treacherously from weak knees whenever face to face with Boots. Rachel suspected the same weakness was afflicting Maggie.
‘Rachel,’ said Boots, regarding desk paperwork absently, ‘suppose we throw the lady at Sammy?’
‘She’ll bounce back in your direction,’ said Rachel. ‘My life, aren’t you ashamed at what you still do to perfectly respectable women?’
‘If I did do it, God knows how they’d rearrange their respectability,’ said Boots. ‘What’s Maggie Collier after besides me?’
‘Somehow,’ said Rachel, ‘she’s got wind of the fact that we’re on course for manufacturing a glorious amount of nylon stockings. And we are now that the machine’s installed and Tommy has it working like Frankenstein with six arms. Maggie wants to contract totally.’
‘I suspect that,’ said Boots.
‘You’re right,’ said Rachel. ‘She wants Coates to have the lot.’
‘Ring Tommy,’ said Boots. ‘Ask him to estimate the output. Then ring Maggie and offer half the total. Tell her, of course, that it’s the lot.’
‘I should put my head on Maggie’s block?’ said Rachel. ‘It’s your head she wants, on her West End necklace.’
‘Favour me,’ said Boots, who knew that if he spoke to the lady himself he’d get invited to a three-hour lunch.
‘I’ll do it for you, Boots,’ said Rachel, ‘and risk the bruises.’
Later, when Rachel had survived her phone conversation with Maggie Collier, Boots was talking to Sammy.
‘You want what?’ said Sammy.
‘Immediately our day here is over, I want you and Tommy to come to Walworth with me,’ said Boots. ‘I’ve phoned Tommy and he’s leaving the factory early to be here by five thirty. In a case like this, three can operate more effectively than one.’
‘What case you talking about?’ asked Sammy, up to his ears in property-
speculation figures on paper.
Boots said that at Belsen he came face to face with the men and women SS guards, and that one woman in particular attracted his attention by way of her cold, contemptuous defiance and total lack of remorse. She was supposed to have ended up at Nuremberg, to be tried, along with all concentration-camp guards, as a war criminal. That hadn’t happened. She’d obviously escaped, as some other known war criminals had, and was living in Wansey Street, posing as the Polish wife of a Polish man.
‘Wansey Street?’ said Sammy. ‘Not next door to Cassie and Freddy, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Not far from them,’ said Boots.
‘Send the police round,’ said Sammy.
‘Sammy lad,’ said Boots, ‘it’s my personal job, something I owe to myself and the victims of Belsen and Himmler.’
‘Funny thing, I never did go much on Himmler,’ said Sammy. ‘Always looked like Monday’s leavings to me. Well, a sort of leftover from a dog’s dinner. Lucky we had a fortnight in Cornwall and had our muscles toned up. I mean, has this female got muscles of her own and is she handy with her coal hammer?’
‘You can expect that,’ said Boots.
‘Well, I don’t usually like laying hands on a female,’ said Sammy, ‘but as it won’t be in business hours and it’s personal to you, I’ll come along. I’ll ring Susie and tell her I’ll be delayed a bit. Has Tommy phoned Vi?’
‘He said he would, and I’ve spoken to Polly. I fancy, Sammy, that we’re all going to be delayed a bit.’
Polly had responded to Boots’s phone call by saying she had a fat chance of being right behind him if he was sneaking off without her. Sorry, Polly old love, said Boots, but you look after the twins and I’ll look after Mrs Kloytski. Take care, said Polly, we don’t give a damn what happens to Himmler’s filthy vixen, but you’re our Rock of Ages.
That evening, Mr and Mrs Kloytski heard a knock on their front door.
‘I’ll go,’ said Kloytski.
‘See who it is before you let them in,’ said Mrs Kloytski.
‘Of course,’ said Kloytski. Arriving at the door, he put his right eye to the spyhole. He stiffened, alerted and retreated. ‘God damn it,’ he hissed, ‘it’s the English swine himself, the one we knew as Colonel Adams, and he’s not alone. I glimpsed other men.’
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