‘He wasn’t grateful,’ said Paul. ‘Still, that kind of gesture educates us in one thing. How to take rebuffs to our bosoms and fight discouragement.’
‘I don’t know about your bosom,’ said Lulu, ‘but leave mine out of it.’
‘Just a figure of speech,’ said Paul, and took her into the old-established pie and mash shop, where in very short time they were sitting down to a nourishing meal, along with people who, like Lulu’s dad, seemed to have grown up very sturdily on this popular Walworth fare. If the UK was still in the doldrums, the market wasn’t. The noise of hustle and bustle penetrated the shop in cheerful fashion, and there was a regular intake of buoyant customers buying hot pies to take away.
‘Ta for treat,’ said Lulu when she and Paul were making their way back to their office, ‘I enjoyed it. I suppose you could be a worse old fusspot.’
‘You’re music to my ears,’ said Paul, and handed a leaflet to an approaching bloke, who took one look at it and thrust it back, planting it on Paul’s waistcoat.
‘Keep it, mate, light yer fire with it,’ he said, and went on like a man who’d enjoyed a satisfying moment.
Lulu’s specs reflected joy.
‘There, that’s one in the eye for your bosom,’ she said, and laughed.
Paul grinned.
‘Just another educating rebuff,’ he said.
Boots wanted to know something, and asked Mr Finch to do him a favour. Mr Finch knew how much he owed Boots for never breathing a word about his German origins. Lately, he had been wondering if the time had come to give Chinese Lady all the facts of his life, but he felt too many years had passed, and so he eventually came to the conclusion that here was a definite case where it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. That meant, as far as Chinese Lady and her family were concerned, that he would take his deepest secrets to the grave with him, for he also knew Boots would ensure they stayed buried.
The British Secret Service had all the facts on his file, of course, but he had their word that on his death the file would be destroyed.
He did Boots the requested favour. He went to Whitehall, where old colleagues still not of retiring age greeted him in their pleasantly civilized way.
That evening, while Chinese Lady was entertaining two old friends from Walworth, he called on Boots and Polly to tell them what had happened to Erich Kirsten and Hanna Friedler, once of Himmler’s notorious SS. Their long interrogation had produced amazing results. Yes, they had both escaped during their escorted journey from Belsen to Nuremberg. Knowing they were listed by British security forces, they decided to avoid the risk of being recaptured and turned east with the intention of making their way into Austria where, at its border with Italy, they could make contact with couriers of an SS escape route and secure new identity papers in Rome.
They did manage to reach Austria, but south of Vienna their luck ran out. They were picked up by Russians and ended up in Moscow, to be interrogated by Stalin’s secret police. Here came a fundamental change in their outlook, a change that had occurred in General von Paulus, the captured Commander of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. They were brainwashed very successfully, and they turned their coats, as he had, in the induced belief that Stalin and his Russians had proved superior in both war and ideology to Hitler and his Germans. They became agents for Stalin’s KGB, and agreed to form a cell in London with documents identifying them as Poles who had served with the Free Polish Army.
During the final stages of their interrogation by the British, they came up with the names of people recruited by them to serve the cause of Soviet Russia. Hanna Friedler had played the traditional siren’s part in this, and so had a hidden camera.
‘So there you are,’ said Mr Finch at the end of his recounting.
‘Dear God, what a pair of frightful stinkers,’ said Polly, ‘with a disgusting record as cold-blooded executioners of Jewish women and children.’
‘So what’s going to happen to them now?’ asked Boots.
‘Whitehall can’t quite make up its mind whether to hand them over to the Russians, who’d certainly execute them, or to make use of them,’ said Mr Finch.
‘What’s wrong with hanging them from some stark tree on some blasted heath?’ said Polly.
Mr Finch said, ‘Polly my dear, in my retirement I’m not privy to the innermost corridors of Whitehall.’
‘Edwin old sport,’ said Polly, who at least knew his government work had been with British Intelligence, ‘you’re not going to be knighted for having been a mere tiddler.’
‘I think I was able to infer a new attitude is developing,’ said Mr Finch. ‘That of making use of some war criminals, instead of extraditing them to Nuremberg. I think America is already doing so. Not publicly, of course.’
‘If Erich Kirsten and Hanna Friedler are going to escape trial and execution,’ said Boots, ‘I smell political perfidy.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Mr Finch, ‘much of what they divulged was in return for – um – favours, although no promises were made.’
‘Which probably still means they won’t be hanged,’ said Boots.
‘We’ll have to wait and see, Boots,’ said Mr Finch.
Chapter Thirty
The Labour government secured the passing of an act that gave the workers a statutory five-day week, thus enabling them to enjoy a full weekend break.
One Saturday morning, Sammy and Susie’s elder son Daniel was high on a ladder at the back of his house in Kestrel Avenue, off Herne Hill, south of Denmark Hill. He was fixing a gutter support, driving in a new bolt as a replacement for a broken one. At the foot of the ladder stood his wife Patsy, and nearby was their little daughter, Arabella. Patsy had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder to keep it steady.
‘Daniel, I don’t like you being so high up,’ she said. Daniel was outlined by the sky. ‘Hey, did you hear me?’
‘Sure I heard you,’ said Daniel, banging away. ‘But if I were lower down, I’d be hammering this bolt into the wrong bit of the wall.’
‘Oh, very funny,’ said Patsy, considered by the family to be much the best thing that had ever happened to Daniel. ‘Wisecracks are out while you’re all the way up there. The ladder’s gotten trembles.’
‘Cuddle it,’ said Daniel.
‘Oh, sure, I grew up cuddling ladders,’ said Patsy. ‘Daniel, come down.’
Little Arabella, nineteen months old, piped, ‘Daddy.’
‘There, Arabella’s telling you to come down,’ said Patsy. Although she was just as adventurous as Daniel, she simply didn’t like to see him high up in the sky.
Daniel gave the bolt one last blow from the hammer, drove it fully home, and inspected it. Satisfied, he slid down the ladder athletically, which made Patsy give a little shriek. But he arrived quite safely.
However, she shook her finger at him.
‘Daniel Adams, don’t you ever do that again, d’you hear? It’s showing off and it’s dangerous.’
‘But, Patsy, you wanted me down, so I thought I’d do it the quick way,’ said Daniel.
‘Don’t give me any uppity talk,’ said Patsy.
Daniel looked at her. There she was, his Patsy, seen against the colourful background of the garden, which she sometimes called their back yard. Excitable, larky and lovely, an all-American girl, dark-haired and bright-eyed, Patsy was a free spirit with no inhibitions. Their attractive house, centrally heated, was their very own, given to them as a wedding present by his mum and dad. His dad had also made him joint manager of the property company with cousin Tim, husband of blind Felicity.
‘Right, Patsy, I won’t do it again.’
‘Arabella and I simply don’t want you to break your neck,’ said Patsy.
‘Daddy,’ said little Arabella again.
Daniel put the hammer aside and picked her up, cuddling her like a warm bundle of soft treasures.
‘You charmer,’ he said, and she put her arms around his neck. ‘That’s my little cheesecake. By the way, Patsy, did yo
u know my sister Bess found an American bloke up in the English Lakes?’
‘My stars,’ said Patsy, ‘was he lost, then?’
‘Dad didn’t say so when he told me. His name’s Jeremy Passmore, and he comes from Chicago. Dad wondered if you knew him.’
‘Well, sure, I know everyone in Chicago, don’t I?’ said Patsy.
‘Is that a statement of fact?’ asked Daniel, slightly smothered by his warm armful of infant girlhood.
‘Listen to him,’ said Patsy, rolling her eyes. ‘What a barmy bloke.’
‘That’s colloquial English,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s true,’ said Patsy. ‘Well, gee whiz, how would I know everyone in Chicago?’
‘Dad’s a bit concerned about Chicago bootleggers, like Al Capone,’ said Daniel.
Patsy yelled with laughter.
‘Your dad’s like you,’ she said through a potpourri of mixed gurgles, ‘a hoot. Bootleggers went out with dinosaurs.’
‘I told him that, in so many words,’ said Daniel, ‘but he still thinks Bess’s American guy is risking it a bit. He’s in Chicago at the moment, visiting his sick father.’
‘Tell your pa to keep smiling,’ said Patsy. ‘Bess’s find in the English Lakes won’t get gunned down.’
‘No, of course not,’ said Daniel, giving Arabella a kiss on her little nose. ‘Well, not unless one dinosaur disinters itself.’
‘Daniel?’ said Patsy.
‘Yes, Patsy?’
‘You’re cute,’ said Patsy.
At his home, in his bed, lovable old Uncle Tom, Vi’s dad, contracted pneumonia and passed away at the age of seventy-six.
Aunt Victoria was stricken. Vi and Tommy did their best to console her. Vi resorted to the comforting value of providing her with a nice cup of hot tea.
‘Thank you, Vi,’ she said. ‘Your dad was a good man, a good husband.’
‘Yes, Mum, I know,’ said Vi huskily.
‘I can’t help thinking I wasn’t always as patient with him as I should have been,’ said the sad widow.
‘Oh, he had his funny ways,’ said Vi, ‘but he understood you.’
‘Yes, of course he did,’ said Tommy.
‘But I never properly listened to him.’
‘Mum, he told me only two days ago that he had a good life with you,’ said Vi. ‘I think he wanted everyone to know that, I think he knew by then that he wasn’t going to get better.’
Boots arrived at that point. Chinese Lady was still sitting at the bedside of the dead man, a distant cousin. The doctor, still present and waiting for an ambulance to arrive while filling in a death certificate, assured Boots there had been no real suffering. Boots regarded the face of death, the peaceful face of a man who had known hardship and the trials of life. He thought of Elsie Chivers who, lamenting her mistakes, had also found peace in death.
‘Goodbye, old chap,’ he said, and went downstairs to offer his own consolations to Aunt Victoria. Listening to her expressing mournful self-reproach, he said, ‘There isn’t one of us who can claim to be perfect, or anywhere near it. Don’t we all wish there were words we’d never spoken, or tempers we’d never given in to? Think about the fact that whenever Tom needed you, you were always there. That, old girl, is your greatest consolation.’
‘Thank you, Boots, you’re so kind,’ said Aunt Victoria.
‘Tommy and I, we’ll see to all the arrangements,’ said Boots.
‘Of course,’ said Tommy.
Boots whispered, ‘Give her a brandy, Tommy, if there is any.’ There was.
If there was one thing the Adams family disliked to confront, it was a funeral of one of their own. In Chinese Lady’s time since her marriage to Corporal Daniel Adams, there had been only two deaths and one funeral. A solder’s rites were accorded her husband, blown to pieces near the Khyber Pass. It was her daughter-in-law Emily who had had a funeral.
Now there was a second funeral, Uncle Tom’s. Even though only a distant cousin, he was still one of the family, as Aunt Victoria was.
Everyone had hated burying Emily, and no-one liked the sight of Uncle Tom’s coffin being lowered into his grave. It occurred to Polly that this extraordinary family either expected its members to live for ever, or thought they should by right. She murmured so to Susie.
‘You mean by wish,’ whispered Susie. ‘Well, I don’t ever want to lose Sammy, and I know he never wants to lose me. Who’d send his shirts to the laundry?’
Which made Polly think of Boots’s shirts, the shirts he wore so well. God, if I ever lost him, I’d jump off London Bridge.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Silently the family watched Uncle Tom laid to rest.
Someone, deft and noiseless as a cat stalking a mouse, broke into the ‘safe’ house in which two suspected war criminals were under protective guard. Without disturbing the custodians, he injected a sleeping woman with poison that killed her in brief seconds. And he did the same to a sleeping man in the adjoining room. None of the four guards detected a sound or a movement.
‘A KGB agent, undoubtedly,’ said a security chief. ‘Ah, well, it’s solved a problem for us. The Russians knew too much for us to make double agents of them.’
Mr Finch, having been discreetly informed of the swift and sudden demise of Erich Kirsten and Hanna Friedler, phoned Boots.
‘I can believe a KGB agent found his way into the house and into two bedrooms without alerting the night guard or waking up either Kirsten or the woman?’ said Boots.
‘It seems so, but there’ll be an inquiry, of course,’ said Mr Finch.
‘Not in an open court, I imagine,’ said Boots.
‘It’s how some things have to be done, Boots.’
‘Well, the extinction of those two animals goes some way to satisfying me,’ said Boots, ‘but I fancy their victims would have preferred to see them slowly hanged.’
‘It’s a preference many of us understand,’ said Mr Finch.
‘Edwin old friend,’ said Boots, ‘do me another favour. Send a Christmas card to that KGB agent via the Soviet Embassy.’
‘We’ve no idea of his name,’ said Mr Finch.
‘Address it “To whom it may concern”,’ said Boots.
Mr Finch smiled as he put the phone down.
December, the week before Christmas.
The firm’s Walworth store was stacked with Yuletide lines, and everything was illuminated by Christmas lights. Manager Freddy Brown and his assistants, Jimmy and Ruby, were busy.
In came a girl, cosily wrapped up in a maroon coat with a black fur collar, and wearing a woollen hat with a bobble. She spotted Jimmy, and spent time inspecting goods until he was finished with a customer. Then she advanced at a brisk walk.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I’m looking for— Well, I never, it’s you, Jimmy.’
‘Half a mo,’ said Jimmy, giving his eyes a treat, ‘I think that’s you, Jenny.’
Gorgeous Jenny Osborne looked as colourful as Christmas itself, her face glowing, eyes sparkling.
‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked.
‘Working,’ said Jimmy, ‘and don’t give me any lip, such as all this time.’
‘But you might at least have sent me a card,’ said Jenny.
‘I might if you’d given me your address,’ said Jimmy.
‘Didn’t I, then?’ said Jenny. ‘But I did call to give you a snapshot of myself on the beach the morning you left. A fat lot of good that was. Your charlady told me you’d all departed at the crack of dawn, you rotter.’
‘Have you come here just to get my goat?’ asked Jimmy.
‘No, as if I would,’ said Jenny. ‘I’ve come to buy two more RAF shirts. I hope you’ve still got some in stock. If you haven’t, I’ll do you to death.’
‘That’s what you’ve come for, shirts?’ said Jimmy. ‘I’m chuffed, I don’t think. Shirts, she says.’
‘And to make sure I was served by you,’ said Jenny. ‘I want all your attention.’
‘You can have my last farthing as well,’ said Jimmy.
‘Really? Jimmy, that’s sweet. Is it all right to give me your undivided attention? I mean, are you terribly busy?’
‘Not at the moment, not personally,’ said Jimmy. There were just two customers, apart from Jenny, and Freddy and Ruby were attending to them. ‘How’s Barry?’
‘He’s fallen for a Siamese art student, thank goodness,’ said Jenny. ‘Look, I’ve got tickets for a jolly pantomime at the Kingston rep theatre for the second Saturday in January. I love pantomimes. Jimmy, would you like to call for me and take me?’
‘Er?’
‘Well, would you?’
‘Do what?’
‘Oh, come on, Jimmy, don’t go gaga on me,’ said Jenny.
‘What’s happening?’ asked Jimmy.
‘It was happening all the time at Daymer Bay,’ said Jenny, ‘and I should have known it. I’ve thought about you lots. Have you thought about me?’
‘Only in a hopeless way.’
‘Well, my word, think positive, can’t you?’ said Jenny.
Jimmy cast a look at Freddy and Ruby. They were still busy.
‘I have to ask,’ he said, ‘exactly why d’you want me and not one of your close friends to take you to this show?’
‘Because you’re a sweetie, and I want us to see more of each other,’ said Jenny.
‘I saw a lot of you in your swimsuit,’ said Jimmy. ‘Talk about moments of joy.’
Jenny laughed, and Jimmy thought, as he had on other occasions, how it made her look sparkling.
‘Jimmy, you’re my kind,’ she said. ‘You’ll call for me at seven, say, if I give you my address?’
‘Not half,’ said Jimmy, ‘and if the snapshot you mentioned is one of you in your swimsuit, or your shirt and shorts, let me have that too.’
‘Well, congratulations, Jimmy, that really is positive,’ said Jenny.
‘My pleasure,’ said Jimmy. ‘Now, this way to the shirts.’
‘Silly man,’ said Jenny, ‘I didn’t really come for any shirts, I came to see you.’
‘You’re making my day,’ said Jimmy, a little lightheaded. ‘After all, I can sell shirts any old time.’
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