Trouble In Paradise

by Pip Granger

  Chester swiped at the wet muck on his uniform with his left hand and used the right to shake with Ronnie, Lenny and Terry in turn. He proved to be a man of few words. ‘Thanks guys, you were great,’ he said.

  ‘Pleasure,’ they replied together.

  Chester turned to Dilly. ‘Are you OK, honey?’

  Dilly nodded. I could feel her trembling next to me.

  Chester turned back to the men. ‘Who are you guys, anyway?’

  ‘Dilly’s friends,’ I answered for one and all. ‘My name’s Zelda, by the way, and these here are Ronnie, Lenny and Terry.’ There was a long silence as we all tried to think of something else to say. Ronnie saved the day once again.

  ‘Ah good!’ he said. ‘A rattling cove, the very thing we need.’ He stepped out into the road and hailed a passing taxi. ‘Get in, you two. It’s got to be safer than the streets round here, with all those GIs about.’

  Dilly was about to step in, when Terry touched her arm. ‘Here’s my key,’ he said. ‘You and Chester can use my place to talk if you like. You won’t want to disturb your mum. I’ll stay with Lenny or Ronnie.’

  Dilly nodded gratefully and took the key.

  ‘Hang about,’ I said quickly. ‘You can drop me off back at the dance. My feet are killing me. You can collect your coat, Dilly, Chester can pick up his trumpet and the taxi can wait for you round the corner.’ I wasn’t about to take no for an answer. I had to get Dilly on her own and urge her to be careful. A man and a woman, alone in a flat at night, the world against them: it was asking for trouble, and I didn’t want Dilly to run the risk of getting pregnant in the heat of the moment. The poor girl had enough problems as it was.

  As soon as we were in the doors of the town hall I dragged her into the Ladies for a heart-to-heart. ‘Now listen. I know you’re mad for this bloke but you have got to keep your head screwed on, along with your drawers. It’s important. Dilly, are you listening?’ I sounded like her mum; worse, our old headmistress. ‘Just hang on a tick. Don’t go anywhere. Promise me. I’ll be back.’ She nodded. I think she was still in shock from the fight. I rushed outside to the cloakroom lady and begged six large safety pins from her. Minutes later I was back in the Ladies. ‘Right, Dill. I want you to safety-pin your drawers to your petticoat. Here you are, here’s the pins. I’ll give you a hand.’

  Dilly just stood there, looking at me as if I’d just escaped from the loony bin. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ she asked, ‘And why six safety pins?’

  ‘It’s in case he tries anything,’ I answered as patiently as I could. There were times, I thought, when Dilly could be a bit dim.

  ‘And …?’ She looked confused.

  ‘Well, if he tries something, he’ll have to undo the pins to get at the, you know, the important bits. I reckon you could get carried away, on account of you fancying him like mad, but by the time he’s undone all six pins, you’ll have come to your senses and you’ll not want to ruin everything by running the risk,’ I explained triumphantly.

  It was a good plan. I liked it. I only wished I’d thought of it years before, when I’d gone to that dance with Charlie. Still, better late than never, if it saved old Dill from a fate only marginally better than death. She let me talk her into it – with much tutting and eye-rolling – but at least she’d stopped shivering and trembling and I’d made her laugh. I’d also made sure she wouldn’t be caught by surprise. If she did decide to do the deed, well she would have decided to, and not been caught on the hop.

  ‘Now remember,’ I advised as we got ready to leave the safety of the khazi. ‘Take a glass of water. Not before, not after, but instead. And here’s a sixpenny bit.’

  ‘What’s that for?’ she asked.

  ‘To clamp between your knees all the time you’re alone together.’

  She laughed and nudged me playfully in the ribs. ‘I mean it, Dilly,’ I said seriously. ‘Don’t get caught like I did. If you and Chester decide to try to make a go of it, have the baby a good nine months after the wedding. It’s so much better that way. Then nobody can blame anybody and say they were forced up that aisle. If you must, you know …’ – we both blushed furiously; thank God we were alone – ‘then use a French letter. Promise me.’ She gave me a nod and a swift hug, and she was gone in a swish of taffeta and petticoats.

  Naturally, all the talk at our table was of the fight, what had caused it and who had done what to who as a consequence. ‘Dilly said the two soldiers had come out of the cinema with a couple of local girls,’ Terry explained, ‘but when the trouble started, the girls disappeared sharpish.’

  ‘Yes, but who started it?’ I asked.

  ‘According to Dilly, one of the soldiers passed a remark to Chester, something about if he was at home, he’d find himself – let me remember this right – “swinging from a tree”. Then he called Chester “Boy”, which, according to Dilly, made Chester see red. The other GI called Dilly some terrible name she won’t repeat, and Chester belted him one. Then the first bloke waded in, Dilly screamed, Chester went down and the rest you know.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll be all right?’ I asked no-one in particular.

  ‘What do you mean – right now or long term?’ Ronnie asked.

  ‘Both,’ I said.

  ‘Who knows, dolly? Who knows? The best we can hope for is that the dear things have some joy finding out.’

  32

  ‘Auntie Zelda, Auntie Zelda.’

  I heard the voice from far away and it took me several moments to line up behind my eyes. I was groggy, having just got to bed and flaked out. It had been the early hours when I’d finally staggered into the flat, knackered and more than a touch worse for wear. All in all, it had been an eventful night.

  The journey home after the dance had been a long one, as transport in London was thin on the ground after midnight. Still, we were in good spirits and Lenny Hobbs had a half-bottle of whisky secreted about his person, which he’d generously shared as we trudged homewards. At some point in the evening he’d managed to win it off a sergeant with more booze than brains. According to the fellas, our Lenny was an ace poker player on account of his looks.

  ‘You think he’s a good-natured idiot, just off the farm, a bit of a sheepshagger and with hayseed between his ears, but he ain’t,’ Charlie told me once. ‘He’s a conniving cockney bastard who could definitely teach your average Monte Carlo cardsharp a thing or two.’

  Lenny himself was modest about his gift. ‘You try looking a queue of angry ladies in the eye and informing them they’ve missed the last of the meat ration this week, when you know for a fact that you’ve got two chops and half a pound of mince tucked under your counter. But you can’t split that into thirty, and you know if you try to choose who deserves to get what’s going, the rest’ll tear you limb from limb. Bluffing comes easy then, I can tell you. A butcher’s life ain’t an easy one, what with this rationing lark,’ he’d explained after a spectacular win over a cocky midshipman from Glasgow, ‘but it can sharpen up your card playing a treat.’

  So, what with the excitement, the long walk home, the whisky and all, it was a while before that urgent ‘Auntie Zelda, Auntie Zelda’ managed to penetrate the fug. I staggered to the flat door and there, huddled on the lino, leaning against the door, with his grubby knees drawn up to his chin, was Reggie.

  ‘Good God! What’s the matter?’ I asked. ‘What are you doing here? What time is it? Does your mum know where you are? Is she all right? The twins? How did you get in the street door? Is everyone all right?’

  Poor Reggie did his best with the barrage of questions. ‘I need to talk to you,’ he gasped. ‘It’s about four o’clock I think, and no, I hope not, I hope she thinks I’m safely asleep in bed, and I wish I was, and Mum and the girls were all right last time I saw them. And getting in was easy, the door wasn’t shut properly.’ He spoke in a rush, between teeth I could have sworn were chattering, despite the warmth of the night and him having his pullover on. ‘Can I come in?’

&nbs
p; I stepped aside and my nephew got to his feet, headed for the kitchen and sat down again. I followed.

  ‘Is everyone all right?’ I asked again, groggily realizing it was the only one of my questions he hadn’t answered. I put the kettle on. ‘Do you fancy a cup of Ovaltine?’ It was Reggie’s favourite, and even in my state I could see he could do with a drop of comfort, poor lamb.

  ‘Yes, everyone’s OK, except …’ He paused. ‘I’d love a cup of Ovaltine, thanks.’

  ‘Except what?’ I asked. ‘Do spit it out, whatever it is, there’s a good boy. Your Auntie Zelda’s not at her best after a night on the tiles and less than an hour’s sleep under her eyelids. I could get tetchy fast if you keep me from my kip without a decent reason.’

  At this point, he burst into tears and I snapped to attention. Big strong boys of twelve did not blub, and neither, in my experience, did this skinny, asthmatic, shortsighted one, not unless things were serious.

  I put my arm around his heaving, bony shoulders and muttered such helpful things as, ‘There, there’ – whatever that’s supposed to mean – and ‘Oh sweetheart, whatever is the matter? Get it off your chest. I’m sure we can sort it out.’ I was lying through my teeth, though, as it depended entirely on what the problem was.

  ‘It’s Tony,’ he said at last, which was when my rattle finally flew out of my pram.

  ‘I might have bloody known!’ I shouted, surprising us both. Reggie jumped, slopping some precious Ovaltine on to his grey flannel shorts, and I calmed down. After all, it wasn’t Reggie’s fault that his cousin was such a liability. ‘I’m sorry, petal. I know I shouldn’t shout at you, you’ve done nothing wrong. But there are times when I think your grandad’s got a point about Tony. What’s the matter with the little toe-rag now?’ I sighed.

  ‘I think he’s in bad trouble, Auntie,’ he answered, then the rest came out in a rush. ‘I was stopping over at Granny Ida’s and Auntie Vi’s with Tony and we was sound asleep when we heard someone tapping at the window. It was Bung’ole. He told Tony to get dressed and come along with him because he had something to show him. Tony didn’t want to go, he kept arguing, but Brian wouldn’t have it, just kept saying he had to come, over and over again.

  ‘I was going to say something, but Tony kicked me to shut me up. Bung’ole couldn’t see me and Tony didn’t want him to know I was there. In the end, Tony got dressed and climbed out of the window and went with Brian.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’ I asked sharply, as I nipped into the bedroom to throw on some street clothes and shoes.

  ‘An hour, almost,’ Reggie answered. He was in tears again, I could tell by the catch in his voice.

  ‘So what happened next?’ I shouted from the wardrobe as I groped for a respectable skirt at the back. ‘Did you go and get your grandad?’

  ‘I didn’t like to, not until I knew what was going on. I mean, you know how Grandad g-gets,’ Reggie stammered, ‘so I followed them.’

  ‘You did what?’ I shouted, head clear of clothes and mothballs at last, and a skirt clutched in my hand. ‘So we’ve got three bad lads on the streets in the early hours? Well, two bad lads and one daft one,’ I amended, in the interests of fairness.

  ‘I only wanted to see what was happening before I got anybody out of bed.’ He sounded sheepish.

  ‘All right. Two bad lads and a brave and thoughtful one then. I’m sorry, Reggie, I’m tired and a bit squiffy. Well, you’d better tell me everything.’ My panic was fast being replaced by a bad case of the hump. For Reggie’s sake, I was trying hard to control it, but it wasn’t easy.

  ‘I came here ’cause I hoped you’d still be awake, after the dance,’ he explained. ‘Anyway, I followed them to Ma’s shed on the allotments.’

  ‘What on earth were they doing there in the dead of night? Gardening?’

  Reggie rolled his eyes at me. ‘No, not gardening, Auntie.’ He sounded a little world-weary I thought, but then he was a weedy kid and it was way past both our bedtimes. ‘If you let me finish, I’ll tell you, won’t I?’

  ‘Yes, Reggie,’ I said meekly.

  ‘Brian does the allotment for his mum, right?’ I nodded and he carried on. ‘Well, he uses the shed as a sort of den, when he wants to get away from Ma.’

  It made sense. Brian wouldn’t be the first bloke to dive into his shed to get away from his womenfolk, or the last. ‘So, you followed Tony and Brian to the shed…’ I prompted. I was getting interested, despite myself.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, eyes growing enormous and his skin pale under the merciless, yellow glow of the electric light. He took a deep breath and began to stammer again. ‘Th-they went in and I sort of hung about outside. They didn’t b-bother to close the door, so I could hear everything.’ He stopped abruptly and I waited, knowing that I had to let the boy get to it at his own pace. If I pushed him, his tongue’d get tied, his stammer would get worse and he’d be embarrassed.

  ‘Auntie Zelda, Brian showed Tony a gun. I saw it. It was a real gun, Auntie! He’s got ammo for it and everything, he showed Tony the box, I saw him. He said he got it off some bloke who works down the docks. Swapped it for some of the petrol he’s been swiping lately.’

  ‘What kind of gun?’ I asked, stupidly, as if it mattered. Any sort of gun in the hands of the Holes was too awful to contemplate.

  ‘He said it was a Luger.’

  I nodded. Even I’d heard of them. It had obviously been taken off some German and brought back to Blighty as a souvenir. There were a lot of them about, and of course boys were naturally drawn to anything to do with war and weapons. They were always picking up bits of shrapnel for their collections. Anything German was highly prized and was swapped or sold for quite high prices. Every boy had a collection. So it was no surprise at all that Brian had managed to get hold of a gun, when I came to think about it. What made it really frightening was that he had the bullets to go with it.

  Reggie broke into my thoughts. ‘That’s not all. He had a hand grenade as well.’

  ‘A hand grenade!? What the …’

  Reggie nodded. ‘A live one, he said. He said he was going to get some more. His mate down the docks had a whole crate, he said. That’s what he wanted Tony for,’ he explained miserably. I thought he was going to cry again. ‘He wants T-Tony to nick the Vicar’s keys. He says he can swap the church candlesticks and that socking great silver plate for more grenades.’

  ‘What the hell does Brian Hole want with hand grenades?’ I’d no sooner asked it than I realized it was another silly question. He didn’t necessarily want them for anything, he just wanted to possess them. At least, I hoped that was all he wanted. The thought of Brian Hole and Ma’s ‘boys’ let loose with guns and hand grenades made every drop of blood an icicle. Bloody hell! ‘What’s Ma Hole planning now?’ I wondered out loud.

  ‘Nothink,’ Reggie answered. ‘At least, I don’t think so. B-Brian threatened to give Tony a seeing-to if he mentioned it to anyone, ’specially Ma.’

  So Brian was branching out, eh? Going solo, doing things that Ma knew nothing about? And his headquarters was their tool shed, the one place he was pretty sure Ma wasn’t likely to disturb, because she made him do all the work on the allotment.

  The thought of young Brian going into business for himself was a scary one. He wasn’t the brightest spark in the tinderbox, let’s face it. Ma discouraged thinking in others, as she preferred to do it for them, so Brian had never really developed the aptitude for thinking before he acted. Blundering about like an idiot was one thing; blundering about like an idiot armed to the teeth was quite another. I would have to do something, but I was blowed if my brain could wake up enough – or throw off the whisky enough – to work out what.

  ‘You’re a good boy, Reggie,’ I said at last, ‘and brave with it. What you’ve told me is very bad, as you know, but right now I’m too tired to think straight. We’ll walk you round to Tony’s and get you to bed again and I’ll see you in the morning, after church. I’ll be able to see things clearer th
en, with luck.’

  ‘What if Tony’s back in bed and wonders where I’ve been?’ Reggie sounded scared.

  ‘That’s up to you, petal. You can lie like mad, if you can think of something he’d believe, or you can tell him the truth. The truth would be better, in my opinion, since lying would just make things more complicated, but you’re the one who’ll be on the spot.’

  I walked Reggie back to the gardens and saw him slip safely through the basement window. He gave me the thumbs up, which I took to mean that the coast was clear and he had no explaining to do to Tony – which must have been a relief to him.

  On my way back to my place, I noticed the light was on in Terry’s flat above the shop. Dilly and Chester were still up, then. It really had been one hell of a night, one way and another. What was more, I had a strong feeling that Sunday would be a similar kind of day.

  Why was life never simple? I wondered, as I sank back into my bed, fully clothed, even down to my shoes.

  33

  ‘All things bright and beautiful,

  All creatures great and small,

  All things wise and wonderful,

  The Lord God made them all.’

  Tony’s voice soared up to the rafters. His singing was as clear and as pure as Granny Smallbone’s crystal wedding beads and he looked as innocent as a newborn chick, only not as fuzzy and yellow. Funny how deceptive appearances could be, I thought bitterly, as I listened. Tony was neither wise nor wonderful; I wondered if that made him the Devil’s spawn instead? I wouldn’t have been at all surprised that morning, I can tell you.

  It seemed to me that I had only just closed my sore, prickly and exhausted eyes when I was called upon to prise them open again. Actually, it was the crack of eight, according to the clock. I’d had about three and a bit hours of kip, which was roughly four hours too few. My mouth felt as if someone had dumped a load of sand in it and my eyeballs felt pretty much the same, only hot with it. My arms and legs felt like lead. I sat up carefully and my head throbbed.