Bless ’Em All

by Saddler, Allen

  Of course, nobody saw him. It was late at night. Everybody was indoors or in their shelters. Thomas knew that he was short of a concrete fact, which meant that he would have to let the suspect go. There could be a strategy in that, however. If Green then disappeared, it would prove his guilt. But somehow Thomas didn’t think that this cool customer would do anything incriminating.

  Bernard, brooding in his cell, thought he had managed pretty well up to now. To be honest, he really didn’t remember doing anything to that woman. He remembered going with her to her flat and he remembered her being dead, but he didn’t remember how it happened. It was as if he checked out of consciousness for a few minutes and some other wild creature took possession of his body. Frightening how easily it could happen.

  Then Detective-Inspector Thomas got the call he was hoping for. A taxi driver, Bob Simmons, rang in. He’d taken a break in Chorley Wood with his family to get away frm the bombing and catch up on some sleep. He remembered picking up Gloria Grainger outside Claridge’s Hotel. He’d picked her up there before, always with a different bloke. She had someone in tow that night. Would he remember him? He was doubtful. It was dark. Thomas scratched his face. They didn’t call him ‘Doubting Thomas’ for nothing. Was it enough? Green was seen with the actress leaving the hotel. He was, in fact, the last person to see her alive. Without a confession it was circumstantial, but, yes, it was good enough to arrest him. He motioned to his sergeant, who collected a constable on the way to Bernard’s cell.

  Bernard looked up. ‘Can I go now?’

  The detective-inspector had put on his deadly face. ‘Bernard Green, I am arresting you for the murder of –’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Bernard angrily. ‘I told you, I put her in a taxi –’

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas, ‘but you neglected to tell me that you got in with her.’

  Bernard’s face was contorted into a snarl. He could feel the rage welling up inside him. He knew that he would lose control if he couldn’t suppress it. ‘You bastard!’ he shouted and started towards the policeman, his face a mask of black rage. The constable grabbed him from behind, his broad arm across Bernard’s throat.

  ‘I have to inform you that you are not obliged to say anything …’ Detective-Inspector Thomas monotoned.

  Bernard had transformed into a snarling animal. The sergeant had to help the constable to hold on to him. ‘Don’t you sod me about,’ Bernard was shouting. ‘She asked for it. Wanted me to pay for it. Right at the last minute.’

  ‘… but if you do say anything, it may be used in evidence against you. I think you’ve said enough,’ Thomas added drily.

  Betty didn’t know whether she was full of shame or delight. Bertie had taken her by surprise, but she knew that she hadn’t put up any resistance. The fact was that she had thoroughly enjoyed the experience. She knew that it wasn’t fair on Stephen. He couldn’t help being in the hospital, but if he had been at home nothing would have happened. Now that she was on her own she took what company was at hand. She liked Bertie. She liked his faintly artistic, black, curly hair. He knew about music and other things, the things that had always been missing from her life. She wondered what she would say when she saw him again. The piano shop was still closed, but he seemed to come every day.

  And he came again the very next morning and rang her bell. He looked worried. Was he not sure of his reception perhaps? He came upstairs. He looked dejected.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ she said.

  ‘The owner has decided to close the shop,’ he replied. ‘Without all the damage the place wasn’t doing any business. Who’s going to buy a piano when it might be blown up next week?’

  ‘I think it’s a lovely shop,’ she said.

  ‘It may be,’ said Bertie, frowning, ‘but not at the moment. The only things we can sell are sheet music and a few records. And that’s not enough for a business of its size. You ought to see the books.’

  They had moved easily into a new phase. His troubles were her troubles. After only one night of intimacy they had somehow become a couple. This was different from her life with Stephen, who never talked anything over with her and made her feel stupid when she asked a question.

  ‘Never mind,’ Bertie said. ‘Not your problem. I’ll have to find something else.’

  ‘Of course it’s my problem,’ she said. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

  He looked up and grinned. ‘I certainly hope so,’ he said, and she fell into her old trick of blushing.

  ‘Why don’t you start something on your own?’

  ‘I haven’t got the money. Pianos are very expensive instruments.’

  ‘Never mind pianos,’ she said. ‘You’re not selling any. Why don’t you take a small shop and sell the music and records?’

  Bertram looked at her, astounded. Maybe she wasn’t so woolly- headed after all.

  ‘I’d still need the rent and the stock.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not like buying a piano, is it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Buying pianos is a big investment, especially when nobody wants them.’

  They drank tea, and Bertie spoke of small shops in an arcade near the market. It was the rough end of town, but those were the kind of people who bought sheet music and records.

  ‘I’ll go to the bank,’ he said. ‘See if I can raise the wind.’

  ‘No need for that,’ she said coolly.

  ‘Why? Have you come into a fortune?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got enough to start you off. Mind you, I’d have to come in with you. Be a partner.’

  He was amazed. ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Whatever next?’

  Betty smiled. Someone was taking her seriously. ‘Drink your tea,’ she said. ‘We’ll go and look.’

  Charlie thought he’d counted all the bricks in his cell, and yet he couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t missed some. So this time he would write down the number of each wall separately. He’d found a bit of old slate so he could scratch the numbers down. He was working on this when a redcap sergeant came in with an officer with red braid on his shoulders. He was an old man with worried eyes.

  ‘Attention!’ shouted the sergeant.

  ‘Just a minute,’ Charlie said, ‘I’ve just got to finish this’, and he carried on counting.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the officer asked in a mild sort of tone.

  ‘Counting the bricks,’ said Charlie. ‘I think I missed some last time.’

  ‘Really,’ said the officer. ‘Can I ask for what purpose you are counting the bricks?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m not all right, am I?’

  ‘Stand up, man, when you’re addressing an officer,’ the sergeant shouted.

  ‘I am standing up,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m not sitting down, am I?’

  The officer seemed immersed in thought. ‘Court-martial?’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the sergeant, and then added loudly, ‘sir!’

  The officer looked at Charlie. ‘Waste of time,’ he said. He stared at Charlie, still busy with his counting. ‘How would you like to work in the kitchen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Charlie. ‘Might be all right.’

  The sergeant looked as though he was about to explode. ‘He was absent without leave, sir,’ and the way he said ‘sir’ sounded like a threat.

  A look of weary distaste appeared on the officer’s face. ‘I know all that, sergeant,’ said the officer. ‘I’m just trying to make the best use of the manpower we’ve got.’

  After hopping about for a while Bert Penrose got the balance of his wonky leg. He needed the crutches, of course, but the fact of only having one real leg didn’t stop him getting about. Then things began to move. A charity found him a ground-floor flat near Clapham Junction, and he moved in there, which was all right, what with the bustle of the market near by. And then he heard that the staff at Claridge’s had had a whip-round and that the management had put in something on top, which pushed up the total to two hundr
ed and forty pounds. The charity sent an adviser to see Bert, who suggested that he might start a flower stall outside the station. He liked the idea of being out and about, and took a brief delight in arranging the stall.

  But there was a snag. You couldn’t get many flowers. Flowers had been registered as non-essential goods, and that meant they couldn’t be carried as freight on the railway. This restriction had led to a bizarre situation, where flower growers from as far afield as Cornwall took day returns and arrived in London with large damp suitcases and trunks full of roses and chrysanthemums, touting them around the flower shops like spivs selling black-market stuff.

  In a funny way, Bert quite enjoyed the battle for survival. It was the only thing that kept him going. The truth of it was that he was finished. An awful blackness had entered his mind. When he saw the crowds scuttling into the shelters at the moan of the siren he viewed the unseemly panic with a kind of grim amusement. If they dropped another bomb on him it would only be finishing off what they had started. They’d had his leg and Edie, left him as a one-legged wonder, on his own to do his own shopping, cooking and not in a fit state to enjoy life as a man. What woman was going to look at him any more? And the worst of it was that he had stopped looking at them. He was there all right, with his little stall, and some people took pity on him, bought flowers they didn’t want, let him keep the change, but he was dead inside, couldn’t respond to kindness, was surly when confronted by a friendly face. People had begun to notice that he was a miserable old bugger. One, a red-faced plump woman whom they called Maisie, told him so to his face. The next time she saw him she went further.

  ‘What are you going to do? Cheer up or cut your throat?’

  The directness shocked him. He began to protest. ‘I’ve lost me leg,’ he said.

  Maisie looked him directly in the eye. She knew she was using shock tactics, but she thought it might be worth the risk. ‘Well, don’t look at me. I ain’t got it.’

  Bert was stunned. It wasn’t a joke, was it? Losing a leg was a serious business. It was for him. ‘And that’s not all …’ He meant that he had lost Edie as well, but the woman wouldn’t leave it like that.

  ‘You mean you’ve lost the middle one as well.’

  The reference to his cock tweaked something in his subconscious mind. So he was alive after all. ‘Yeah,’ he leered. ‘That’s all right, don’t you worry.’

  The Maisie woman winked. ‘Glad to hear it,’ she said.

  And Bert smiled a twisted smile. He gave the woman a bunch of pink roses that had just arrived that morning from Kent. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Have those on me.’

  ‘Well, thank you, kind sir,’ Maisie said, and did a mock curtsy. ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘If you get down to Clapham Common about six I’ll stand you a half in the Plough.’

  Bert’s shoulders relaxed, for at just that moment he felt all right again. ‘You’re on.’

  21

  HELEN got a job with Geoffrey Bles, which wasn’t a big firm in the publishing world, and she said she hadn’t got much to do. Jimmy, who was now in Wandsworth Road, knew that they could never now meet up in their lunchtimes. But they continued to see each other and went to the pictures at weekends, each feeling that this was pleasant enough but somehow not really satisfactory. It was Helen who broke the cycle. She had a married sister, who had a little baby called Fred, after his dad who was in the Navy. Fred senior was home on leave, and he and his wife Sheila wanted to go out together one evening, and Helen had got the job of looking after Fred junior while they were out. Helen said that Jimmy could come and sit with her. They would have a place to be which was private, and they could sit and talk. Jimmy was happy to fall in with these plans. After all, the parents couldn’t leave a baby all on its own, what with air raids going on, and they needed some time out together, as husband Fred would be off to God knows where and they might not see each other again for months.

  Jimmy arrived at the little house in Clapham Old Town. Sheila was an older version of Helen, the same silky copper hair, the fresh, pale face, the little nose. Fred was in his sailor’s uniform. He was tall and bony, flat-faced with wavy hair. He kept bending his knees and hoisting his trousers up, and he walked with a roll as though he was still aboard ship. He kept winking at Jimmy as if they were in a secret conspiracy that they knew the women wouldn’t understand.

  ‘All right then, Jim?’ he said and winked like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Jimmy found all this puzzling. And he found baby Fred a bit of an oddity. He had never been at close quarters with a baby. Fred junior seemed preoccupied with blowing bubbles which burst in his face and made him cry.

  ‘He’s all right,’ said Sheila. ‘He’s been fed. Just put him down in a minute and he’ll sleep.’

  The mother and father were dressed up like they were going to get their photograph taken. Helen took the baby and they all said goodbye as though they were going on a long journey.

  ‘We won’t be late,’ Sheila said. ‘We’re going to the Majestic, and then Fred will want a drink.’

  Fred looked serious. ‘You’ll be all right. If Moaning Minnie starts, go under the stairs. Safest place.’

  They went out. Jimmy looked at Helen. This was a new situation. Just the two of them alone – well, there was the baby, but he wasn’t likely to say anything. Anyway, he was soon asleep in his pram, which Helen said was the best place in case they had to wheel him under the stairs.

  A dreadful quiet followed, in which Jimmy wondered what was going to happen. Now they were free to act natural he was a bit worried. They couldn’t go on kissing for about three hours, could they? Even kissing had its limits. He sat close to Helen on the settee and put his arm around her. She responded by going limp in his arms like he’d stabbed her with a poisoned dart. He kissed her, and her mouth was open. She seemed to have given herself up to him entirely, a sort of human parcel for which he was responsible. They kissed and kissed and got hot and sticky. They broke away, gasping.

  ‘Phew,’ he said. ‘Hot in here.’ He moved to the end of the sofa. Helen was staring at the floor.

  ‘I suppose’, she said haltingly, ‘that you want to see me.’ Jimmy felt uneasy. What did she mean? ‘Well, look away. I’ll tell you when.’

  He looked at a series of grey castles on the wallpaper, listening to slight scurrying movements behind him.

  ‘All right,’ came a small voice. ‘You can look now.’

  He turned his head and was stunned to see that she had taken all her clothes off. ‘Blimey,’ he said and felt the onset of a moment of panic. Christ Almighty. He hadn’t been prepared for this. Naked women never came into the sphere of the Gem or Magnet. Some of the fellows had sisters who played hockey, but they never appeared as anything but another version of boys. He didn’t know how to deal with this new manifestation of their relationship.

  ‘You can touch me if you like,’ Helen said in a slightly severe manner, ‘but don’t go mad.’

  He stared at her. She wasn’t very big. Her little breasts were like rosebuds on the point of bursting into flower, her limbs slim and very white, a ginger triangle between her thighs. She was looking at him, waiting for some reaction, some encouragement, some acceptance. After all, she had taken the first step. It was his turn now. He moved closer to her. He could feel something strange happening to him, something in his trousers that had never happened before, at least not in front of another person. His cock had taken on a life of its own, outside his control. This was grown-up stuff. Should they, at their age, being playing these kind of games?

  ‘Helen,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say. I’ve never seen anyone before … like that.’

  She smiled a smug smile. She was on top of this situation. Despite the fact of them being the same age she felt at least two years older than him. The poor boy was embarrassed, and didn’t she love embarrassing him.

  ‘Your turn,’ she said, and the poor boy went red. He was al
l right cuddling in the back row, kissing in dark corners, but when it came down to it he was a bit slow.

  Relief came for Jimmy when Fred junior started making a choking sound. Helen picked the baby up and stroked his back, jogging him up and down. When he stopped choking he started crying, and then there was the spectacle of Helen, stark naked, walking up and down the room with the squawking baby. After a while the baby subsided and Helen put him back in the pram.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ve had your sixpenny’s-worth,’ and she started to put her clothes back on.

  After that they sat in silence. Neither of them seemed to know what to say. It was clear that there had been a definite shift in their relationship. Helen had been willing to make a tentative step into the adult world, while Jimmy had hung on to his childhood. They both knew that things between them could never be the same again. When Sheila and Fred returned, Jimmy and Helen were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa as if they had had a row.

  ‘Wasn’t any trouble, was he?’

  ‘No,’ said Helen. ‘He was very good.’

  Jimmy walked her home to Battersea. It was quiet that night. Nothing threatening in the sky, but momentous movements on the ground between the two young people. When they said good night, he kissed her, but there was no warmth in her lips. They didn’t make any arrangements to meet up again, and they never did.

  Betty was pleased with the way that life was shaping up in Balham. Bertie had found a shop near the market, and she had given the money for the first month’s rent and enough to buy the stock. For the moment Bertie was giving his services free. She still had to make the Greenline trips to Caterham to visit Stephen. As time went on Stephen began to look thinner and paler, and she found she was unable to engage him in conversation. And there was a funny smell about him, maybe caused by the stuff they were giving him. The poor dear looked weak and exhausted all the time. She didn’t tell him about the new shop or about Bertie, as she didn’t want to worry him, although Bertie came with her on a Wednesday when it was half-day closing, waiting in the grounds until she came out. She found Bertie was quite good company. He didn’t get on with his wife, who was always wanting things they couldn’t afford. They had lots of rows because the wife attributed their low state of affluence to Bertie’s lack of ambition and get-up-and-go.