I thought I might find some clue about my father when I cleared her flat, but there was nothing. If it hadn’t been for her reaction to the paper, I’d never have known he was alive. But now I did, I promised myself I’d find him. I wanted to know what he’d done to her. Why seeing his name was enough to make her give up the fight, slide into death as if she were glad to go, to escape her memories.
I began by listing all the men whose names had been in the paper. Mourners at funerals, sellers of prize pigs. Appearances in court. There were a lot, but I didn’t think it would be too difficult to weed them out.
But now I’m here, it doesn’t seem so simple. All I know is that he’s got to be old enough to have fathered me. He must have had power, some kind of influence, to have used my mother the way he did and not had to pay for it. He has to have it still, if his name alone can frighten her. He must be entrenched in town, an upright citizen or a complete rogue.
I will find out. And there’s one thing I know for sure. I shan’t turn out to be the only bastard in this.
There are peculiar duties ascribed to the coroner, more particularly to inquire into the manner in which persons have come to their deaths where there is any reason to suppose that they may not have been by natural means (Jervis on Coroners, 1927:13).
The parish hall is always cold. Stone built, north facing, it’s a grim place for wedding breakfasts and christenings, but it’s perfect as a temporary mortuary.
Nash keeps his coat on as he moves between the trestles. He’s seen his fair share of death. In France in the first war, and since, as coroner. He’s been called upon to inquire into accidents and suicides, sudden fatalities, even a murder or two. He tries to do his job to the best of his ability, give every death a true bill.
He pauses as he reaches the head of each trestle. Lifts the covering to identify, to confirm, to show respect. It ought to be simple enough, but he’s puzzled.
Eight dead.
Seven, he knows. Names he anticipated. Faces – what’s left of them – he watched last night, called to mind this morning. Yet now the seven have been tallied, one more remains.
The girl they’d brought out first has been put on the far side of the room. Laid apart from the others. He turns the sheet back. This one’s different from the rest, and not only because no one, so far, has been able to identify her.
So young. A stranger. And there’s no sign on her of the bomb’s blast. She’s not been butchered, turned into a blackened tangle of flesh and bone like the rest. She’s bloodless, neat, clean. She could almost be a waxwork. Her skin’s still soft, pearl and pink. There’s a scrape on her temple, and her skull’s dented, just a little, on the left-hand side. She looks like a doll, played with by a careless child, and abandoned.
Nash frowns, bends closer. Brighter than the bottle blond of her hair, a thread of orange silk is tangled round the gold stud in her right ear. He loosens it carefully. Tearing a blank sheet from his pocket diary, he folds the paper into a makeshift envelope for the thread.
Seven from the Cricketers’ Arms. Known, identified. Seven certificates, a formality. Death by War Operations.
But the eighth, that’s not so simple.
Who is she, this stranger? How did she die?
Silent, he makes her a promise. She may be one death amongst many, but every death matters, or Hitler’s blitz is just slum clearance and some bastard Nash knows – some smart alec – thinks they can use the grave of seven innocent people to hide a crime.
It isn’t going to happen. He will find out.
*
I sit daydreaming, looking out over Market Place. It seems so peaceful after London. Although I feel like a stranger, the town is much as I remember. A couple of shops have got new owners, but I could still buy a bucket from the ironmongers or a lipstick from the chemist across the square if I wanted to. The women with their shopping bags have half-familiar faces, and I feel like a child again, observing from the fringe of things.
I’m looking back towards The Hundred, the main street into the square, when a man comes hurrying along. He’s purposeful, middle-aged and sturdy, wearing a dark coat and grey trilby. I catch a glimpse of the heavy glasses masking his face as he crosses towards the Town Hall.
Bram Nash.
It’s my cue. Time to move on. I go across the room to where the two men sit talking. Maitland looks up, hostile at the interruption.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Good afternoon, Mr Maitland. I don’t know if you remember me? Jo Lester. Josy Fox that was. Joseph’s granddaughter.’
As he stands up, I catch the faint urine tang of tweed, the antiseptic overload of mouthwash.
‘Ah, yes, Josy Fox. It must be thirty years.’
‘Not quite that long.’
I smile, a polite nothing to include both men, though Maitland’s companion doesn’t bother to look up.
‘I hope your grandfather’s well?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ I hope my tone makes it clear I’ve no interest, either. ‘Are you still in practice?’
‘Indeed I am. Do you need an appointment?’
‘Thankfully not.’ He can take that how he chooses. ‘I just wanted to make myself known since I’m back in town. You might remember my mother, Nell? She died a few weeks ago.’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ But there’s nothing of sympathy in his face. If he has a conscience about her, I haven’t caught it yet.
‘It’s why I’m here,’ I say. ‘There are things she told me . . . things I need to sort out.’
There’s a flicker of a look between the two men. Perhaps I’ve touched a nerve after all. I’m glad. It may not have been the best exit line in the world, but it’ll do.
3
The same day, afternoon
NOTHING LIKE IT HAS HAPPENED here in years. The town has had its share of violence: a drunken temper, a hasty blow, instant regret. Of sudden death: a tramp slipped over the mill, a soldier, a grandmother, a blitzed-out friend in Pompey or London or down in the huddle of Southampton’s streets. But this is different. This is murder.
The streets buzz with the murmur of lowered voices. People draw together, peering over their shoulders to see who’s listening, itching to hear the latest. The only ones who hold aloof are batty old Dave on the corner, cap out for pennies, and Miss Waverley, hurrying past the Town Hall, too snooty to gossip with the hoi polloi.
A stranger, dead, at the Cricketers’.
A girl.
No one knows who she is.
It wasn’t the bomb, Tin Chops says, it wasn’t that old fucker Hitler. It wasn’t bad luck, or mischance, or sheer bloody accident.
It was murder.
A girl, alone in that pub?
She can’t have been respectable.
Who could have done it?
Someone we know?
Not in Romsey.
Who, then? Who?
An outsider.
A gyppo, a tinker, a townie.
It can’t be one of our own.
*
I knew one of the most difficult things about coming back to Romsey would be seeing Nash again. And now I’m here, it’s even harder than I thought. But it’s got to be done.
I stroll into the square, trying to look as if I haven’t a care in the world. It’ll be difficult if his business keeps him in the Town Hall for long, but I’m lucky, because barely five minutes after I saw him go in, he comes out again. He doesn’t notice me at first, turns into Church Street. I hurry to intercept him.
‘Mr Nash?’
He tips his hat. Though I know he recognises me, it’s the merest gesture. He sidesteps, ready to walk on.
I put out my hand, not quite touching his sleeve. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Nothing to say.’
‘It’s not personal. I have to be here. I want to explain.’
‘No need.’
‘Bram!’
‘If you must.’ He glances around. ‘Better get off the stre
et. Standing here’s just jam for the gossips.’
It doesn’t bother me, I’m ready for people to know I’m back. But I need Nash’s goodwill. And something more.
‘Where shall we go?’
‘The Wheatsheaf will still be open,’ he says, checking his watch. ‘It’s not three o’clock yet. I’ll buy you a drink.’
There’s a brewery in town, and so many pubs there’s a saying, So drunk he must have been to Romsey. They reckon a thirsty man can drink himself into a stupor any time he likes. Cross the right counter with silver and there’ll be a pint of the best under it.
I feel like a fool, trailing behind Nash in silence. The Wheatsheaf’s a miserable dive, but I’m glad to get inside. We settle in the dingy back bar, two chairs and a table in front of an unlit fire. The pub’s empty, the room shadowy, the only window blacked out. Apart from the gin Nash fetches from the bar, it’s a very different meeting from last time.
London, October 1940. The Blitz
Outside, sirens wail. Inside, the bar is crowded. Touts and tarts, drunken sailors, Brylcreem boys scarcely out of short trousers. But no one bothers to move. The bombers have come every night for more than a month, the alarm has worn off. The fear remains, but there’s no point in shifting when you know it doesn’t matter where you go. Everyone’s heard the stories: shelters being hit, people inside getting trapped – crushed, or burned, or boiled alive. Might as well stay and finish our drinks.
The bar’s lit with a sickly yellow glimmer. My throat’s ragged with smoking; my eyes sting as I light up another cigarette. The gin’s too weak to have much effect, and I’m sick of myself, of everything. I’d almost welcome a bomb.
I’m ready to quit when my attention’s caught by a man in the corner. The briefest glimpse, but recognition jolts. I angle for a better look. A sketch of jaw and mouth, yet I could swear I can smell coal tar soap.
There’s a moment of instant recall. Of sitting on a sun-warmed bank, hoping the boys would let me join their gang. Watching their leader’s profile sidelong, thrilled to be close to my hero. Smelling the clean scent of Wright’s Coal Tar Soap on his skin; aware of my own stink, ashamed of it, one bath a week in water everyone’s used, the must and dust of the cottage clinging.
Abe. Leader of the gang. When he was away from the rest of us at his posh school, we’d hang around aimlessly, getting into trouble. But when he was home, the adventures began. Bolder, braver, more inventive than the rest of us, he was Captain Abe, and we were his crew.
It is him, I’m sure of it. So far out of place and time, yet I’m convinced. I get up, stub out my cigarette. I can’t let the moment pass.
I’m almost too late. A blonde moves close to his table. Her raucous greeting carries across the room.
‘Hello, darling! Looking for a good time?’
I don’t catch his reply. Whatever he’s said, the woman huffs away. His head lifts and the shadows slide back, revealing heavy, black-framed spectacles, thick tinted lenses that obscure his eyes.
I hesitate. I don’t remember him needing glasses. But recognition’s as strong as sunlight on my skin. Bold with memories, I pull out a chair, sit down across the table from him.
‘Hello, Abe,’ I say. ‘Remember me? Josy Fox.’
A pause. He leans into the shadows.
‘Hello, Josy.’
There’s something not right about his voice. A kind of slur, but he can’t be drunk, not on the gin they serve here. And now I’m close, I can see there’s something wrong with his face, too: the left side’s blurred, somehow indistinct. I’m so nervous I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head.
‘What did you say to that woman?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘The tart. You frightened her off.’
‘Ah.’ A pause. ‘Tell me, when were you last in Romsey?’
‘What?’
‘You heard. When were you last in Romsey?’
‘You know as well as I do. July ’15, when my grandfather kicked me out.’
‘A lot’s happened since then. Are you sure you want to pursue it?’
‘Are you telling me to bugger off?’
He makes a sound that might be laughter. ‘Same old Josy.’
‘Same old Abe. But I prefer Jo, these days.’
‘And I was never that keen on Abe. It’s Bram.’
‘Still no answer, same old Bram.’
‘I would have been seventeen when you went away. The next year, I enlisted. The Rifle Brigade. Got sent straight out to France.’ He moves forward into the light, lifts his hand to the wrong side of his face. Outlines what seems at first to be a deep crease on his cheek, but now I can see it’s a margin. A place where his flesh stops and something artificial begins. He taps, and the sound is metallic. ‘The year after that, I got this.’
Now he’s moved closer, I can see the strange demarcation continues above his glasses, bisecting his forehead, vanishing under his hair. The eye beneath the left-hand lens doesn’t blink. He’s wearing a mask, hiding who knows what.
‘In Romsey,’ he says conversationally, ‘they call me Tin Chops.’
‘She wouldn’t go with you because of that?’
‘It’s not exactly a first.’
‘But you were looking for someone?’
He looks away. ‘Perhaps.’
‘So was I.’
There’s a silence between us, a well of stillness. I watch his face, refuse to be ashamed. In times like these, even strangers do it. In the street, in air raid shelters, in full view of other strangers. Life asserts itself, as physical, as unstoppable as a sneeze.
‘How about it then? Will I do?’
‘I suppose . . .’ He shrugs, meets my gaze. ‘Why not?’
We pass the blonde as we thread our way out of the bar. The woman mutters ‘freak’, and laughs.
Anger flashes through me. Then there’s an overwhelming sense of tenderness. Never mind the ugly way we’ve met. Tonight’s not just strangers on a pick-up. It’s the past, a girl who didn’t belong. A boy who let her join the gang.
Out in the street, the air raid is in full swing. The sky’s bright with searchlights and falling incendiaries. Almost overhead, anti-aircraft guns open fire. A skein of tracer rises lazily into the night, at odds with the continuous hammering of the battery, the crackle of spent shells falling back to earth.
‘I ought to warn you,’ I say. ‘My room’s on the top floor. You wouldn’t rather take shelter?’
I can’t make out his reply till he shouts in my ear, the touch of his breath making me shiver.
‘Changed your mind?’
‘Not at all.’
I take his hand, pull him into a run.
The city around us blazes with light and noise. It’s only a few hundred yards to the shabby front door that leads to my mother’s flat, but we’re laughing, breathless, by the time we arrive.
I sense his hesitancy as I open the door, usher him into the darkened stairwell.
‘No one’s home,’ I say, glad for the first time that Nell’s in hospital for a few days. ‘Cold feet?’
He doesn’t need to reply. There’s nothing cold about the way he kisses me. I put my arms around his neck. Despite our past, it’s the first time we’ve kissed, though I used to dream about it long ago. I drown in the taste of him, the scent. The beat of my blood obliterates the sound of battle outside until the sudden close detonation of a bomb and the lurch of the stairs under our feet makes me pull away. Plaster dust sifts onto my face.
‘Getting close.’
‘Yes,’ he mutters. ‘Where’s your room?
I lead him in. The blackout isn’t up, and the room’s bright with light, painted with diamond shadows from the taped windows. He kisses me again, and I can’t tell, after that, who’s using who. Who gives, and who takes. It’s flame and the crackle of burning. It’s the shriek of bombs and the rock of the city deep on its axis.
It’s so much more than I bargained for.
F
eelings I’d buried deep. So much less than I want.
Then it’s over.
*
The night has turned silent when I feel his weight shift as he gets out of bed.
‘Jo,’ he murmurs, so quiet it wouldn’t have woken me if I’d been sleeping.
‘Mmm?’
‘I don’t want you to think . . .’
His tone warns me he’s regretting it already. I sit up.
‘What shouldn’t I think?’
‘This isn’t, I can’t . . .’
It hurts, but I know what I have to do.
‘If you’re trying to tell me this was just about sex, don’t bother. I know.’
Light from burning London illuminates his face, a tricky amalgam of red gold and shadow.
‘Ships that pass in the night?’ he says.
‘Of course. We’re never going to see each other again, Bram. I’m never coming back to Romsey.’
‘Good. I’m sorry, Jo, but I don’t do tomorrow.’
‘You know what they say. Tomorrow never comes.’
*
But it does. And here we are. The meeting in London was a coincidence, but this one isn’t. I’ve engineered it, and I knew how much Nash would hate it. But there’s nothing I can do. I have to be here.
The silence between us is barbed. I don’t blame him for it. Or for making me speak first.
‘What happened,’ I say. ‘Can’t we forget it?’
‘I thought I had.’ He drains his glass in one.
‘I didn’t mean to come back, you know that. But then my mother died.’
‘Ah.’ He rubs his face. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’
Despite everything, when he says it I can believe him.
‘I knew what you’d think when you heard I was here. I wanted to explain. There are things I’ve got to do.’
‘I see.’
But he doesn’t, not yet. I take a deep breath.
‘I may need to be here some time. I have to find a job, somewhere to live.’
‘Your family won’t help?’
One small sentence. If my coming back has hurt him, he’s had his revenge in full with that. I can’t forget the way Grandfather said my family wouldn’t help all those years ago, because he’d told them not to. And I hadn’t asked then and I won’t, now. Because as far as I know, none of them except for Sylvie – and she’s not even a blood relation – had ever tried to find out what had happened to my mother or me.
The Unexpected Return of Josephine Fox Page 2