One Fight at a Time

by Jeff Dowson

  Ellie picked up the kettle and went into the wash house to fill it. Grover listened to her clattering about and watched the kettle steaming on the fire grate.

  They sat at the table, tea cups in front of them, the milk jug and tea pot between them. Grover gave her a précis of his last weeks in Germany and his return home. Ellie listened, fascinated by the story of life in conquered Europe. She asked him what it was like in post war Berlin.

  *

  What Grover remembered was the struggle to control chaos.

  Berlin was one hundred and sixty kilometres inside the Soviet Empire – policed in the west by Britain, France and the United States; in the east by the Soviet army. Stalin hated the arrangement and he had a quarter of a million soldiers wrapped around the city.

  Charlie Company was billeted in Nissan huts erected in a park, east of Tempelhof Airport. Not much at first glance, but they had toilets that worked, running water and hot showers. There was a cookhouse, a dining hall and a recreation room which doubled as a cinema.

  Baker Company was dispatched north, to look after the Schonberg and Kreuzberg districts. Once an area of wide boulevards and four storey houses, until the allied bombing raids and Soviet artillery barrages tore the guts out of the city - peopled now by old men, women and children. They asked for it seemed the majority opinion from Baker Company. Maybe, Grover thought, but he could not look at the devastation without wondering if round the clock pounding with incendiary bombs wasn’t just plain vengeance. At least, the western allies were now delivering tins of Spam, instead of bombs. Trouble was, some of them were going missing. And turning up again in black markets all over West Berlin.

  Grover put two and two together very quickly. There was not a kilo of anything produced in West Berlin. There was one source only. And it was coming into his part of the city in US planes. Nobody gave a damn about GIs passing on their free ‘Luckies’ to the frauleins, or the odd kilo of gasoline disappearing. But coal, potatoes, flour and medicines were a different matter altogether. Sometimes a matter of life and death.

  He encountered his first Berlin body in an alleyway off Potsdamer Platz. A girl, fifteen or sixteen maybe. A skinny kid, in a tattered green dress. Raped and strangled. She had no identification papers. Stolen by the killer to delay any investigation.

  “I recognise her,” one of the MPs said. “There’s a floating black market along Unter Den Linden. She’s part of that. Don’t know her name. Just another street kid.”

  “Nobody’s ever ‘just’ anything,” Grover said. Angry at the loss of yet another life. He asked what would happen to the body.

  “There’s what passes for a morgue round the corner, on Wedenstrasse,” the MP said. “She’ll be taken there. We’ll make some enquiries, see if we can find a relative.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Then she’ll be buried with a bunch of other people with no names.”

  “For chrissakes...”

  The MP looked into Grover’s eyes and shrugged. “Best we can do. Last week we found a dead boy, maybe five years old, in a cardboard box.”

  Grover stared at the MP. And in that moment, he decided ‘best’ was not good enough. Sure, it was difficult to care seriously about anybody in this charnel house. But no sixteen year old girl should perish in a shithole back street, unknown, un-mourned, forgotten.

  He asked Lieutenant Berger, for permission to investigate.

  Two days later, newly promoted Sergeant Major Grover was transferred to Charlie Company and re-located to Tempelhof Airport. He appreciated the pay hike, but he was angry at being moved. He wanted to do something about the dead girl. The army wanted him out of the way. He asked Berger for an explanation. He was not given one.

  So he focussed on the airport; and on the non-stop work to get stuff distributed around battered West Berlin. Until December 1949, when the men of the 21st Infantry were told they were going home.

  *

  At the table, Ellie had been engrossed in the story.

  “And nobody did anything about the girl?”

  Grover shook his head, reached out and poured himself another cup of tea.

  “So come on,” he said. “News from the home front.”

  “What can I tell you?” Ellie said. “Oh yes... Arthur is going to retire in the summer. Business in the shop gets a little better every time something comes off ration. We should do alright.”

  “What about Harry?”

  Ellie breathed ‘Mmmm’. Looked down at the table top. Shifted in her seat. Her answer was a long time coming.

  “I’m worried about him,” she said.

  “Why. What’s he doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I’m not sure about that either.”

  She sighed. Sat back in her chair. Grover reached across the table. Enclosed her left hand with his right.

  “Come on. From the beginning,” he said.

  Ellie twisted her left wrist and squeezed Grover’s hand. Then she freed it and sat up straight in her chair.

  “Harry’s school certificate grades were good. But he wouldn’t stay on in the sixth form. Insisted he wanted to get a job. He left school, despite protests and advice to the contrary.”

  “Did he get a decent job?”

  “For a while. After half a dozen odd choices, Harry decided he wanted to be a journalist. He got a job on the Post as a cub reporter. Which basically involves making the tea. But he did alright. He was enjoying it. Starting to get out and about shadowing reporters, assisting sub editors on the preparation of stories. Then suddenly, he decided he didn’t want to be a reporter any more. I persuaded him to work here in the shop. I guess I still live in the hope that, one day, he’ll take over the business.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “Not much more than a couple of months. He did more odd jobs, here and there, for cash. Then he was called up for national service. You know how that works?”

  “Sure.”

  “He did his eighteen months. Twelve of them at Warminster and the final six months in Germany. A Rhine Army base near Osnabruck. He came back from it all, smiling, fit and happy to be home. He wangled himself a job at the Hippodrome. As a lime operator.”

  Grover wondered for a moment. Ellie elaborated.

  “You know, those big lamps up in the gods, used to spotlight the main character on the stage and follow him around. Limelight.”

  “And he’s held that job down has he?”

  “So far. But...”

  Ellie paused, collected a jumble of thoughts, put them in order and went on.

  “Harry didn’t work on Saturday. Somebody else was doing the matinee and evening shows. He went off somewhere during the day. He hasn’t been back.”

  “So when did you last see him?”

  “At breakfast Friday morning. He said was going to spend the day with his friend, Nick Hope. They were at junior school together. They lost touch for a while, then met again at Warminster, when they were called up. They did their army basic training together. Went to different postings, but came home within a couple of weeks of each other, last autumn. Nick has a flat on Cumberland Road, near the Albion Dock. Sometimes Harry stays with him. Sleeps on the sofa. That’s why we weren’t concerned when he didn’t come home.”

  “And what does he do? Nick, I mean.”

  “I don’t know exactly. He works, in some capacity or other, for the man who owns the flat he rents. Roland Bevan.”

  “Bevan,” Grover said. “Famous name.”

  “Which is where the resemblance begins and ends.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s best described as an entrepreneur. He had a very successful war. Did well out of it. If you know what I mean.”

  Grover knew about ‘entrepreneurs’. He had met enough ‘entrepreneurs’ to last a lifetime. Americans, Poles, Hungarians, Serbs, Germans. He had yet to encounter the British spiv, but he had seen pictures of the comic Arthur English
. Pencil moustache, silver grey suit, with a velvet collar jacket and wide shoulders, kipper tie and cocked hat

  “Bevan ran a successful black market operation in south Bristol during the war,” Ellie said. “Probably still does.”

  “You mean he’s a racketeer?”

  “In his current manifestation, he’s a boxing promoter. And he was transformed into something of a local hero a year back. He bought a row of derelict houses on Cumberland Road and re-built them. Set a challenge to the city council. You see, most of the re-building programmes have stopped. The city’s flat broke. And there are huge rows about where the priorities lie. Homes or city centre businesses. So, enter Roland ‘call me Roly’ Bevan. Posing on the front page of the Western Daily Press in his hard hat, as the new Bristolian. The man who can get things done.”

  Grover watched Ellie closely as she told the tale. Then he gave voice to the concern underscoring it. Choosing his words carefully.

  “So... You wonder if Harry has been seduced by the Roly Bevan show?”

  Ellie suddenly looked miserable.

  “At times. On low days,” she said.

  “Then we need to do something about that.”

  Ellie looked at him. No words. She just waited.

  Grover had just become part of whatever was going on. He knew that. No cause to think about it; no pros, no cons, no deliberations. Nine years ago, the Morrisons had turned a weekend of tragic circumstances into support and kindness without a moment’s hesitation. They were good people.

  “I assume Nick’s flat is in this row of houses,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “No.”

  “So why don’t I take a look? If he is there, he might talk to me.”

  Ellie’s body language changed. She straightened up and smiled at Grover.

  “He might. Last week he said he was looking forward to your visit.”

  Grover looked at the clock on mantelpiece. 12.35.

  “What shift is Arthur on? When does he get home?”

  “Everybody’s back to pre-war normal. There’s no money for round the clock shifts and overtime. It’s back to civilised hours. Or relatively so. 8 to 6. Arthur won’t be home until this evening.”

  “Give me the address of the flat,” Grover said. “And tell me how to find it.”

  Chapter Five

  It was high noon and Sam Nicholson’s temper had not improved overnight. He was in the driving seat of his Rover. On his way down the A370 towards Weston Super Mare, as pissed off as he could remember. He snarled to himself, for the umpteenth time, then leaned forward and bellowed through the windscreen.

  “Where is this fucking lane end?”

  Brockley Wood, several square miles of glades, combes and cultivated forest lining the road, had not been accessible for years. The Old Scarlet Fever Isolation Hospital, or rather what was left of it, sat in the middle of the wood. Closed since the summer of 1939, it was now a major embarrassment to Bristol City Council; who had taken over the hospital, after a fire burned most of it to the ground. With its patients re-housed, North Somerset Hospital Company was strapped for cash and only too pleased to be rid of the place. However, the war had wrecked a succession of half-arsed and hurriedly laid plans for the site – even the brand new NHS had no desire to take it on. And now, eleven years, endless meetings, and four buildings sub-committees later, it had become Sam Nicholson’s personal white elephant.

  It was this burden which had driven him to listen to Rodney Pride. Well that, and the prospect of making money.

  “This must be it,” he said looking ahead to his left. “At fucking last!”

  He swung the Rover onto a dirt track with grass growing up the middle. The car bottomed out and something on the track surface wacked the silencer box on the exhaust. He negotiated the bumps and the disintegrating verge for about half a mile, until he saw the old hospital iron gates in front of him. They were open. He drove into the courtyard.

  Pride was already there, leaning against the bonnet of his sky blue Pontiac Coupé.

  “Fucking poser...” Nicholson muttered and got out of the Rover.

  Pride stood up straight. Nicholson did a survey. The place looked like the Messines Ridge had in 1917, except the holes in the ground weren’t so deep.

  “So?...” he began.

  Pride picked up his cue.

  “You have a Projects Finance meeting Tuesday evening. Here’s the offer.” He handed Nicholson a piece of paper with the figure on it. “The Finance Committee will bite your arm off.”

  Nicholson stared at the paper. Then looked back at Pride in disbelief.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That’s bugger all for Christ’s sake.”

  “Anybody else offering anything?”

  “No. But that doesn’t mean we can give the place away.”

  “You haven’t been able to do that in eleven years.”

  Nicholson took time to sniff, exhale, look around and think.

  “Come on Sam, agree in principle,” Pride said. “And I’ll tell you the real deal.”

  Ten minutes later, Sam Nicholson was roped.

  The two men were standing in the only part of the building to survive the fire. Ward 3 and a couple of single rooms attached to it. The beds were as the last patients had left them. Years of dust and cobwebs apart, the place was all but ready to re-open for business.

  Pride pointed to the pocket where Nicholson had stored his paper offer.

  “That price buys us all of this. It’s what we intend to do with it, that’s going to make us a small fortune.”

  “I didn’t realise they’d left so much stuff behind,” Nicholson said.

  “The water and drains still work,” Pride said. “Toilets still flush. No electricity of course, we’ll have to get generators in.” He pointed through the window to his right. “The phone line can be reconnected from that pole there.”

  “But it’s a hospital for God’s sake. I mean, you’re not going to run a –”

  “Not quite. But the next best thing.”

  He offered no more. He was waiting for Nicholson to take the bait. Eventually he did.

  “Go on...”

  “Babies,” Pride said. “We’re going to turn this into a maternity ward.”

  Nicholson stared at him. Pride waited, in no hurry to elaborate. He watched Sam’s face twitch as the idea took hold. Then he went on to explain.

  “One of the by-products of the miserable time we now live in, is a platoon of un-married, pregnant women. Thrown out by their families. Living on their own in shithole single rooms. Too terrified to use bottles of gin and the old wire coat hanger; or to visit some backstreet bedroom and hand themselves over to an abortionist. So here we are. The saving grace.”

  Nicholson found his voice. “The illegal, saving grace.”

  “Well yes. But the right service, at the right time, in the right place.” He opened his arms and spread them wide. “Here...”

  “And doctors, and midwives, and nurses?”

  “Don’t need that many. Eight beds in here. One of the single rooms back there, will be the birthing room. A dozen members of staff will do the trick. Along with somebody else to run the place.”

  “Erm...”

  Nicholson looked at Pride, who grinned in response.

  “We’re going to make a fortune.”

  “How?”

  Back in the day, Nicholson had been an accountant whose grasp of double entry book keeping was legendary. And so far, while all this sounded acceptably philanthropic – albeit, in a not entirely legal sort of way – there was no profit he could see. Pride looked straight into his eyes.

  “We’re going to sell the babies.”

  Nicholson sat down on the bed behind him, unable to say anything. Meanwhile, the man standing next to him was on a roll.

  “Midwives are easy,” Pride went on. “We can recruit armfuls of abortionists, give them the right conditions to work in and pay them well.
At least, more than they charge for their potions and tubes and dubious efforts in damp bedsits.”

  “Nurses?”

  “More of the same,” Pride said.

  “And doctors?...”

  “A couple of struck off GPs. Plenty of them about as well.”

  “All of which cost money,” Nicholson said.

  “Only a percentage of what we’ll sell the babies for. There are more couples desperate for babies than you can shake a stick at. Infertile newlyweds; forty something year olds who lost their sons in Europe after D Day; women who have already had miscarriages and know they can’t produce... No shortage of customers Sam. And look at the service we can provide here. Five star accommodation, clean beds, experienced staff. And no potions, tubes or coat hangers. You couldn’t get better in the BRI maternity wing.”

  “The only difference being, what you propose is against the law.”

  Pride grinned at his putative partner.

  “We have to think big Sam. Like winners. This decade’s going to be a belter. And we are in a great position to profit by it.” He paused for a beat or two, then wound up. “What do you say?”

  “How long will it take to set up?”

  “We can have the place cleaned up and working inside a week; including the bathrooms and the kitchen. We don’t have to bother the electricity board. The two generators are in my workshop, ready to be moved here. We can have women in those beds by the end of the month. I admit that the GPO will have to pull its finger out and re-install a phone line, but you ought to be able to exert some pressure there. Tell them the building contractors will need to be able to communicate with suppliers?”

  “What building contractors?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Sam. Any fucking pretend labourer...” He pointed through a window. “We’ll put a cabin out there, with a couple of desks in it. Box files, paperwork, filing cabinets. The GPO can run a line to it. Like they do with every other building site.”

  Nicholson looked nervous. Which morphed into glum, then back into nervous. “Well yes erm...”

  “Look, I know the phone palaver is a bit of a risk. Unfortunately, we do need a phone line. But once the GPO have hooked up our phony business, we’ll be able to disguise this place.”