by Robin Jarvis
When Mrs Stokes saw her, the old woman bristled with resentment and a scowl that was fiercer than normal settled over her face.
‘Hello, Irene,’ the stranger said in an irritating, nasal voice, ‘how are we this morning? Down the Underground again last night, were we?’
‘What if I was?’ Mrs Stokes replied through tight lips.
The other woman gave a thin and haughty laugh. ‘I really don't know how you can bear it,’ she droned, ‘all those sweaty people cooped up down there.’
‘I like their company,’ came the pointed and arch response.
‘Well, I couldn't manage it, and poor Tommy would hate it,’ she added, giving the dachshund's head a kiss. ‘Are you off to get something nice for your son's tea? There wasn't much left in the butcher's, I'm afraid, just some scraps of mutton and bacon.’
‘I heard he was goin’ to have some sausages in.’
‘Uurgh, there were. But oh, I wouldn't have given them to Tommy. You know how sensitive he is. A morsel of anything untoward and he's off his food for days. Heaven knows who'd want those nasty-looking articles—I'm surprised at Mr Rogers, he's usually so particular in his standards. Still, I expect there are some round here who won't object, and we mustn't waste anything, must we—what would Lord Woolton say? I was lucky enough to get a lovely couple of chops—one for Tommy and the other for Kathleen—yes, you'll like that won't you, laddy?’
Mrs Stokes’ face became terrible to look at; before her, the irritating woman fluttered her eyelids for a moment at Neil, perplexed as to his identity, then she decided it was wiser to leave.
‘I'd love to chat,’ she blithely lied, ‘but I must return to my sewing machine. You'll be at our next meeting, I trust? I'll make a seamstress of you yet, you mustn't give up on your first few attempts, you know. I've been working on something rather spectacular, I can't wait to unveil it to the rest of the ladies.’
Mrs Stokes would have liked to bite both her and the dog, but she nodded woodenly and waited until she had gone out of earshot.
‘Who was that?’ Neil ventured warily, for it looked as though Mrs Stokes would explode at any moment.
'That's Doris Meacham!’ she festered. ‘Lives at number thirty. All she ever does is swank. What I'd give to bring her down a peg or three. I hope her Krautish dog gets gassed or worse. All fur coat an’ no bloomers she is. Her and her Make-Do-and-Mend classes; oh, she loves telling us how clever she is and showin’ off the latest bit of rubbish she's made and all the things she's managed to salvage for the war effort. A bin for this, a bin for that! She's nothing but an empty-headed, barren-bellied woman with too much time on her hands. One of these days I'll learn her, she'll come a cropper and I hope I'm there to enjoy it.’
Her cracked voice faltered as a cruel and wicked idea hatched in her spiteful, jealous mind and she chuckled callously as the plan took malignant shape in her thoughts.
‘Oh, she wouldn't like that now, would she?’ Mrs Stokes sniggered, tottering back to have a conspiratorial word with the three boys she had just chastised.
Unexpectedly leaving Neil to tend to little Daniel, she spoke in a hushed whisper to the boys, nodding her head continually so that the feathers in her hat bounced a wild jig above her head.
Neil was confused by the change that had come over her. ‘What's the old witch up to now?’ he muttered.
To his surprise, Ted answered him. ‘You better watch out for her,’ the bear hissed, ‘she's about as friendly as a rattlesnake, only without the personality. A hunk o’ pure granite grinds where her heart oughta be—when she heard her grandson was dead she never shed one lousy tear.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I seen it all before,’ he said mysteriously, keeping an eye trained on Mrs Stokes, who was already trundling back to them. ‘You better get plenty of rest this afternoon, kid, tonight you an’ me have gotta be someplace. This whole business is about to begin.’
Chapter 10 Frank And Angelo
Plodding wearily through the factory gates, Jean Evans dragged the headscarf from her hair and thrust it into the pocket of her overalls. It was already growing dark, another shift in the munitions factory was complete and she had had enough. Her pretty face was streaked with oil and all she desired at that precise moment was to soak in a bath that was overflowing with hot water and foaming with bubbles. But all they had at home was a small tin bath and even its meagre pleasures could not be enjoyed in private, for it had to be filled in the kitchen and her grandmother was continually traipsing in and out to assert that it was still her house.
Around her a crowd of similarly tired women doggedly made their way homeward—women who before the war had never seen the inside of a factory, much less worked in one. Now they could weld, rivet, strip engines and operate heavy machinery as well as any man and some had already begun to wonder if they could ever settle back into domestic roles once the war was over and they had to surrender their jobs.
Pushing through a group who had lingered by the gates for a smoke before returning home, an eager, fresh-faced girl with dark, chestnut-coloured hair and ice-blue eyes hurriedly made her way forward.
‘Jean,’ she called, waving her hand in the air, ‘Wait for me.’
Kathleen Hewett was a sprightly, orphaned youngster, whose boundless energy at work disgruntled her fellow employees and scandalized them out of it. Since her arrival in the district nearly a year ago, she had come to be regarded as a flighty piece, always ready to enjoy herself despite the scorn she received from certain quarters. She took immense delight in the company of the opposite sex and there was usually at least one member of the armed forces linked through her arm.
One of Kathleen's favourite quips, when an interfering busybody rounded on her, was that if London could take it, so could she. Ma Stokes, however, had once acidly observed that she regularly did.
For most of the war Kath, as the troops called her, had apparently moved from one house to another—having been bombed out so many times that she lost count. She was, in fact, something of an enigma and rarely mentioned her origins. At the moment, she was billeted with the snobbish Mrs Meacham and it gave Jean's grandmother great joy to see her reviled neighbour saddled with such a frivolous creature.
‘Ooh, you look like a wet Saturday,’ the girl giggled as she drew level with Jean. ‘I couldn't let any bloke see me with a face like that, I'd frighten him off— “be like the kettle and sing”, that's what I say. I'm gonna go down the pictures tonight, do you wanna come too? The Man in Grey's showin’ at the Gaumont. Ooh, I don't half fancy that James Mason, doesn't his voice make you go all pimply?’
‘Fellers are the last thing on my mind,’ Jean assured her.
‘No wonder you look like that, then,’ Kath laughed.
‘Do you mind, I am married.’
‘No you're not,’ Kath said bluntly, ‘your Sandy's bought it and you know it.’
Jean glared at her. ‘He's listed as missing!’ she said forcefully.
‘Same difference, one of these days you'll be gettin’ a telegram like your dad did about your brother. Least then you'll be able to mourn him proper, ‘stead of moping about the way you do. It's a shame though, innit, the way your Sandy never ever saw little Daniel.’
‘I don't believe you sometimes, Kathleen Hewett,’ Jean blurted as tears sprang to her eyes. ‘For someone I've only known four months, you go too far!’
‘What've I said now?’ the other cried in astonishment.
Up the dark flight of steps leading to the booking hall of the Bethnal Green underground station Neil hurried, until he burst into the night and took great lungfuls of the sweet, fresh air.
Sitting on his shoulder, Ted wiped his leather nose with his paw and nodded vigorously. 'The smell of the great unwashed is something ya gotta experience to unnerstand,’ he choked. ‘Boy, I wish my eyes could water!’
They had just escaped from the scrutiny of Mrs Stokes. At her son's insistence, the old woman had reluctantly taken them t
o the shelter she frequented every night, after giving Neil a meagre and distasteful tea that consisted of half a knobbly sausage that was full of gristle and a dollop of sloppy mashed potato.
The platform of the underground station was packed with people and a noxious fug that was borne of primitive toilet facilities and the unquenchable pungency of countless stinking feet. With his hand over his mouth, it had not been difficult for Neil to lose himself in the crowd and evade the old harpy's sight.
Now he stood in the gloom of the blackout, breathing deeply in an effort to dispel the memory of the awful smell.
‘I was gettin’ worried in there,’ Ted muttered in his ear, ‘them screwballs coulda burst into a cockney singsong at any minute. If I so much as hear someone hum “Roll out the Barrel” or the one about the Brown dame kickin’ her legs in the air, I am gonna heave up my kapok.’
‘I can't stick this out,’ Neil complained. ‘Why do we have to stay with that family? That old bag has made my life a misery all day. I hate her! Can't we just hide until Josh turns up?’
‘Not for a whole four days, kid,’ Ted told him, ‘anyway, they're not all bad. Mr Stokes is pretty peachy and as for his daughter!’ The bear gave a soft wolf whistle.
Neil sighed. ‘I suppose they're all right,’ he confessed. ‘Jean was nice to me, she even gave me some of her afters when the old witch wasn't looking.’
‘Glad you approve,’ Ted grinned, ‘but we better take off now. There's someone I gotta see tonight and I wouldn't miss it fer the world.’
Neil glanced around them and shivered. It was a cold night but there was something more to it than that and his nerves were all on edge.
The bear felt the boy's shudders and he viewed the darkness curiously. 'There's a bad feeling tonight,’ he murmured, ‘dunno what it is, summat downright nasty in the atmosphere an’ I ain't talkin’ about dirty socks. I don't like it. Sooner we take off the better. Start walkin’ thataways kid, right now is when it all starts.’
Down a pitch-dark road Neil made his way, with Ted urging him on and tapping his shoulder like a jockey on a horse. Presently, they came to the high street, which Neil recognised as the place Mrs Stokes had taken him to that afternoon, to stand for hours on end in the queues outside shops as she waded in, brandishing her ration books like weapons and standards of war.
‘Whoa!’ Ted hissed, reining the boy to a standstill by pulling on his ear. ‘Just wait a minute, kid. Damn, I hope we're on time.’
Neil stared up at a great, dark shape outlined against the black sky, taller than the surrounding shops. 'What's that?’ he asked.
‘Don't you have movie theatres in your time?’ Ted replied. ‘Hold on, look—just there!’
The foyer of the Gaumont Picture Palace was dark in accordance to the blackout, but inside it thrilled and flickered with silvery life and high adventure.
Striding determinedly from the double doors came the figure of a woman who hastened past the shuttered shop fronts, heading in the direction of Barker's Row.
‘Jean!’ a voice called out behind her. ‘Hold on!’
Out of the cinema came Kathleen Hewett, her high heels clattering awkwardly over the pavement as she endeavoured to catch up with her neighbour.
“Ere,’ she cried, pressing some coins into Jean's hand, ‘compliments of the manager, with sincerest apologies. I told him that we had to leave early on account of a dirty old man sitting behind us making improper suggestions. Well, I weren't goin’ to pay for a flick I never saw.’
‘You should have stayed,’ Jean told her. ‘I'm just not in the mood for watching no film, I only came out tonight to spite Gran. I should never have left Daniel with her. I couldn't sit there all evening.
'He'll be all right, the old misery guts ain't so bad as she'd let anything happen to him. I'll walk back with you, but hang on, these heels are murder.’
As the two women made their way through the deep darkness, Neil turned his head to look at Ted.
‘What are we spying on Jean for?’ he asked. 'We knew she was coming here, she said so at the dinner table.’
The bear merely prodded his shoulder and pointed behind them.
Neil peered into the darkness where he saw two figures emerging.
'This is swell, Frank! Real swell! We got the whole of London—the only interestin’ place in this blasted hick country, and you go and get us lost! I told you we shoulda got a cab. Them weasels are fallin’ over themselves to get GI nickels. But no, who hadda get a limey bus?’
‘Hey, I'm sorry, but I p-promised my mom I was g-gonna ride one o’ them red jalopies. I can't wait to write home an’ t-tell her, though I'll leave out the shutters on the windows. Beats me how the folks round here see where they're g-goin’.’
‘Frank, Frank, you do not write to your mother on a weekend furlough—it's un-American! Boy, I really gotta take your education in hand. You, Private, are sadly lacking in the ways of this oh-so-wicked world.’
‘Is London wicked? The little I saw looked pretty g-good to me.’
‘I ain't showed you some o’ the joints I know. I tell you, pal, there are places in this town that are really jumpin’.’
‘Aw I d-dunno, Voo, I only been in this country three weeks an’ I wanna see more than the inside of some bar. D—do you know how much history there is here?’
‘History—who wants to be surrounded by a museum? This is life, kid, you gotta get out there and live it.’
From the gloom the two Americans came, and Neil eyed them curiously whilst Ted seemed lost in a half-forgotten memory and a sorrowful expression stole over the bear's face.
The one called Frank was tall and gawky, reminding Neil of his father. He was young and awkward in his movements like a freshly-hatched baby ostrich, but his voice and manner were painfully sincere and he apologised to his buddy for having brought him here and wasting his time.
‘G-gee, I'm awful sorry,’ his soft, buttery voice stuttered, ‘you shoulda g—gone with the rest of the guys. I ain't cut out for no high life.’
‘You will be by the end of this furlough, farm-boy. That's a Signorelli promise.’
Frank's companion was a foot shorter than he was. He had a pleasant, handsome face furnished with Latin features and jet black hair that was swept back over his head, glistening with tonic. Eyes like dark diamonds flashed and glittered with infuriating impudence whenever he saw a pretty face and his brash, incorrigible speech had already won him many a heart.
He was extremely liberal with his aftershave and doused himself in it all too frequently and wherever he went, an overpowering, fragrant odour drifted after him—much to the distaste of the conductor of the bus they had recently alighted from.
‘Hey,’ he cried to his buddy, ‘you gotta see this new trick, it's a doozy.’
Delving into the sheepskin-lined flying jacket which swamped him he brought out a well-thumbed deck of cards and fanned them before Frank's nose, jumping round him like a boisterous puppy whilst his unceasing banter rattled along.
‘Choose one!’ he yapped eagerly. ‘Any at all, go on. This'll slay ya—I swears.’
‘But I can't even see the d—danged cards!’ the other exclaimed. ‘Sorry, Voo, but what use is that?’
‘Have I showed you the one where I make Tex disappear?’
'The first week I g-got here.’
‘Impressive though, huh?’
‘Uh, I think it were wasted on me.’
Too highbrow, eh? I got a million more, less complicated. There's this one where I tears up a picture of Rita Hayworth that has them clammerin’ for more, an’ I can fold a piece of paper into any shape you like.’
“Why would I want you to d-do that?’
'I better save my stuff for those who appreciate it.’
The men were drawing near to Neil now but as yet, neither of them had seen him.
With his glass eyes gleaming in the gloom, the ghost of a smile twitched the corners of Ted's mouth. Then his furry body shuddered and he whispered
quickly into Neil's ear.
‘Move into that doorway, I don't want them guys to spot us.’
Without arguing, Neil obeyed and presently the Americans passed them by.
'We gotta find a cab an’ snappy,’ the shorter one cried. ‘I might as well be back at base as here. Least there I know where to find some action. Do you think this is where all the undertakers live? Frank, old buddy, I figure we've stopped off at Morgueville. I bet the stiffs have more of a riot than the folks livin’ here. I ain't even seen one measly pub, we really gotta scram. I wanna be back in Piccadilly, did you see those dames hanging round outside Rainbow Corner? Zoweee—them commandos sure were loaded.’
‘I'm not certain they was all that n—nice,’ Frank drawled, shaking his head thoughtfully. ‘I heard all ‘bout g-girls like that. I'd rather go straight back to the Red C-Cross Club.’
‘You nuts? The night is young and who wants to meet “nice” girls anyway? I got a reputation to live up to, the guys are countin’ on me—they're runnin’ a book on Signorelli conquests this weekend. Hey, I been thinkin ‘bout growing one o’ them teeny little moustaches like Errol Flynn or Gable—do you figure the broads'll go for it big time?’
Frank gave a good-natured laugh and his companion shrugged his shoulders.
‘Ah,’ he said, you're right. I oughta stick with the Valentino image, he had real class, same as me. ‘Sides, if I change now it might break the charm.’
In the shadows of the shop doorway, Ted peered out at the retreating backs of the airmen.
‘Would you just look at that no-hoper!’ the bear said scornfully. What a schmuck! The boob don't realize what a geek he is. Do he really think he looks like Rudolph Valentino? He ain't as pretty as he likes to think. Look at him in that flying jacket—it's way too big. A pint-sized Romeo is all he is. Jeezus, it's embarrassin’.’
‘You know them?’ Neil muttered.
‘I did once, kid,’ he replied darkly, ‘but that were a lifetime ago, a lotta things've changed since then. You mind if we follow them a little ways more? I promise this won't take long.’