At the Dark Hour

by John Wilson

  – Mummy says you’re going back to London on Saturday.

  – I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I’m afraid I have to.

  – But you’ve only just got here. Why do you have to go?

  – It’s the war, darling. We can’t always do what we want to do.

  – Can’t we all go back together then?

  – Deborah. We’ll all be together soon. But, for now, I have to go back on my own. I’m going to have to live apart from Mummy for a little while – because of the war – just like you’ve had to be living apart from Mummy and me.

  – Are you going to be a soldier?

  – No, darling. I’m not going to be a soldier. I’ll be in London. But a different part of London. Will you look after Mummy for me until she comes back to London?

  – Mummy can look after herself.

  – But keep an eye out.

  – Mummy says that you’re weak. That you’re the one that needs looking after.

  – What else has she been saying?

  Deborah looked away.

  – She says you don’t eat properly. And you’ve got a bad cough. She thinks you spend too much on cigarettes.

  – I’m sorry I forgot to bring your present with me. I promise to send it up from London in the next few days.

  – Oh. That’s all right. There aren’t any good presents at the moment anyway.

  – Look after Mummy – and Deborah, if you hear bad things about Daddy don’t worry about them. Everything is going to be all right.

  ****

  Catherine had allowed him one night at their home in Dulwich to pack his things. She was unmoved by his entreaties, and he supposed he should have expected that. However, he had nowhere to go. And so he found himself back in the Temple in the hope that he could borrow the flat in Dr Johnson’s Buildings again, just for the short term. Whether he would find someone around with a key between Christmas and New Year was another question altogether. He dropped his bags and the cat in the entrance to Stirrup Court and decided to have a look around the Temple for signs of life.

  He stepped out through the rubble, dust and broken glass. He hadn’t allowed himself the time to look at the devastation wreaked on the Temple in the preceding months. He had been too preoccupied with his own problems, and anyway, when he emerged from Chambers the blackout would be in force and it was not possible to see everything. He walked back through the arches of Cloisters towards Lamb Building. Today, under a sky heavy with rain clouds, he had his first proper chance to look around. The Clock Tower of the Library had gone, and the associated buildings of the Benchers’ Smoking Room and the Treasurer’s Room were largely demolished. A large part of the Dining Hall had been destroyed by high explosives. Elm Court and Fig Tree Court, of course, had also gone. Beyond the Hall, down towards the gardens, most of Crown Office Row had disappeared, and looking east towards King’s Bench Walk he could see that many buildings there had sustained significant damage. Weak sun glinted off broken glass in the window frames and there were craters in Inner Temple Gardens.

  But the bombing had eased over Christmas. Stirrup Court was still in one piece, as was the Master’s House, the Temple Church and Lamb Building. Dr Johnson’s Buildings also, to the west of Inner Temple Lane, was still intact. And so was Cloisters. He allowed himself a quick inventory. Paper Buildings was still there, and Pump Court, Harcourt Buildings, Hare Court and Mitre Court Buildings. All was not lost. The worst may have passed.

  As he completed his tour he saw a group of men assembling on the Terrace staircase in front of what remained of the Hall and Buttery. He recognised them as employees of the Inner Temple. From July 1940 the Inn had provided a nightly fire guard that had been stationed in the Buttery to the west of the Hall. They were often to be seen sitting on the stairs at what had been nicknamed the “Golden Gates” – large Victorian iron gates which had been built in 1870 but, prior to the Blitz, had rarely been open.

  – Hullo, Mr Falling.

  One of the men was walking across to him – greying and in his late forties but as good-natured as ever –

  – Hello, Barry. What are you doing here?

  – Could say the same for you. We’re keeping an eye out for your buildings, sir. Shouldn’t you be celebrating Christmas somewhere?

  – Barry. I need a favour. Is that flat in Dr Johnson’s Buildings still available? I need somewhere to stay for a few days.

  Barry took him by the shoulder, led him away from his colleagues and looked at him keenly through blue-grey eyes.

  – Where’re your things, mate? I’ll see what I can do.

  – They’re in Stirrup Court. It should only be for a few days.

  ****

  Barry looked at the cases and cage containing the kitten.

  – Wait here. I’ll go and get the master key.

  And on his return he helped him up to the third-floor flat and opened the door onto a small bedroom with a kitchen off to the side.

  – I don’t know how I can thank you. It isn’t as it may seem you know.

  – Don’t worry, mate … sir, whatever. You’re not the first, if that’s any help. I don’t think you’ll be thanking me so much if they start dropping bombs on us again.

  – Is there any chance you could find me a bit of milk – for the kitten, I mean?

  – I’ll see what I can do.

  And he was gone. Without fuss or questions.

  ****

  It was five o’clock on Sunday 29th December 1940. The blackout shades were down and the room was lit only by a small oil lamp that Barry had considerately provided. The nameless kitten was lapping up a small saucer of milk. Adam put his crystal paperweight on the bedside table and thought back. It was only sixteen days since he had seen Bateman in conference – since the Pembertons’ party. On Wednesday or Thursday of next week he would be served with the petition. He would start clearing out his room in chambers on Monday morning, beginning with his paperbacks. The air raid sirens started sounding, and gradually he began to hear the dull roar of planes. They seemed to be saying “We’re coming … we’re coming … we’re coming …” over and over again and he knew he should be making for the air raid shelter but, really, he just couldn’t be bothered. He’d lost Catherine, Deborah, his home, and soon his profession. And worse would follow. He would be the subject of ridicule amongst his professional colleagues and might find his way into the newspapers – “the nearest I’ll ever have got to being in the law reports!” What little money he had left would not go far, with the legal costs and the damages.

  The drone of planes was getting louder and closer but he chose to ignore it. The kitten had finished the milk and was licking itself clean. He picked it up and it mewled contentedly as it balled up in his hands and tried to push its face against his.

  – I should give you a name.

  The little cat pripped and mewed and looked into his eyes.

  – What’s a good name for a little cat like you?

  He rubbed his knuckle on the cat’s nape. The planes sound as if they were almost overhead and the whistle of shells started, rattling the window frames. The cat started, its pupils narrowed, and it dug its little claws into his forearm.

  “One direct hit. Just one direct hit. That’s all we need.”

  And almost before the thought was complete there was an enormous explosion just outside his window. The oil lamp went out and the whole building began to shudder.

  “This is it.”

  And then there was a frantic hammering on the door. It was Barry shouting through the darkness and the noise.

  – Incendiaries! They’re dropping bloody incendiaries! The whole bloody place is going up in flames! Open the bloody door! We need help!

  PART TWO

  Chapter Twenty-four

  (Monday 30th December 1940)

  Jack Storman KC lowered his umbrella as he passed through the Tudor Street Gate and into the Temple. The rain was beginning to ease but the hissing sound that had accompanied him from Blackfriar
s grew louder and more sinister as he walked past King’s Bench Walk. The sight that greeted him was dumbfounding. He let the umbrella drop to his side and was oblivious to the drizzle landing on his head and shoulders. There was freshly broken glass and rubble all around him. The acrid smell of burning. To his right the remains of 5, King’s Bench Walk were still smouldering. Ahead of him he could see that the Temple Library had been virtually destroyed and smoke continued to rise from two sets of chambers. Water damage to what remained of the library testified to the intense fire-fighting that had gone on overnight. Rain on hot ash was causing the hissing noise. In the distance he could hear glass being swept away.

  All our books …

  A few dazed individuals had begun the task of sifting through the new destruction and he saw some members of the Bar he recognised picking through the broken stone for what remained of their possessions. He tried to picture the battle against the bombs that must have taken place during the night but his imagination faltered at the task. He and Margaret had lain awake in their Anderson shelter as the bombing continued and, as always, he wondered whether Stirrup Court would still be there for him to go back to in the morning. The signs were not good. He took a last look at King’s Bench Walk and then headed towards Lamb Building, seeing with relief that it had survived untouched. Beyond it the white pillars and columns of Cloisters also remained. His hopes were rising as he turned the corner into Stirrup Court and saw it standing as it always had done. He made to go inside.

  – Mr Storman! Mr Storman!

  A bedraggled man was running towards him, his clothes and face black against the white pillars of Cloisters.

  – Barry! What is it?

  – Come quick. It’s your Mr Falling. He needs help.

  – What’s Adam doing here? I thought he’d gone out to Suffolk.

  – He’s in 2, Dr Johnson’s. Come quickly!

  Storman forgot about going into Chambers and followed the man as he dashed back up Inner Temple Lane. Barry gave a garbled account of the fall of the incendiaries the previous night as they climbed the stairs to the third-floor flat.

  – There were fires everywhere and we had to work flat out with the hosepipes. Mr Falling was staying in Dr Johnson’s and came to help.

  Barry turned the key and they entered the little flat. Adam was lying unconscious on the bed, his trousers covered in soot. His white shirt, stained red, was soaking wet and open to the waist. A sheen of perspiration glistened over the dirt on his chest and face and his breathing was laboured and uneven. Storman could see the bump of his ribs under the shirt. He seemed a lot thinner even that a week or two ago. His crystal paperweight was by the bed. This was not the time to ask him what he was doing there. Barry took a towel and wiped the dirt and sweat away from his face.

  – What happened?

  – There was so many fires in and out of the Temple that we ran out of water.

  He gestured at the figure on the bed.

  – He was like a madman, sir. Running in and out of buildings and trying to beat on the flames with whatever he could get his hands on. I’m surprised he didn’t kill himself. I told him to be more careful but he took no notice. When the fires spread to the Library he really went doolally. You’d have thought he owned it.

  – How did he get hurt?

  – That’s the funny thing, sir. I got him to calm down after a while and we started relaying the water up from the Thames. He was passing the full buckets to me and I was taking them up to the next man in line.

  He paused and wiped Adam’s face again.

  – Then at about three in the morning. Just before it started raining. I came back to him with an empty bucket and he was collapsed on the ground with blood coming out of his mouth. I had to half carry him back here. He was raving again when I got him to his feet.

  – How long has he been unconscious?

  – About seven hours, I think. He’s been talking in his sleep.

  – What’s he doing here, Barry?

  – Arrived last night with two bags and that kitten. Said he needed a place for a few days. I didn’t ask any questions, sir.

  Storman hadn’t noticed the kitten until then. It was sleeping in its cage in the corner of the room. More questions were forming in his mind but he decided it would be better if he kept them to himself.

  – By the way, sir. Who is Julia?

  Storman was startled by the question, but before he was able to think of an appropriate answer a stirring from the bed distracted them both.

  – Jack?

  Adam was trying to raise himself into a half seated position. His eyes were dim and out of focus.

  – Is that you, Jack?

  – Adam. Are you all right?

  – I haven’t got any cigarettes. They all got soaked. Do you have any cigarettes, Jack?

  – Never mind cigarettes. We need to clean you up and put some fresh clothes on you.

  – Have you got any more milk for the kitten, Barry?

  Before Barry could answer Adam sat bolt upright and grabbed Storman’s arm, a look of panic in his eyes.

  – What day is it Jack?

  – It’s Monday.

  – But what’s the date?

  – 30th December. Why do you want to know?

  Adam fell back onto the bed and became calm again.

  – Not the New Year yet. Not the New Year.

  – Come on. Let’s get you out of those clothes.

  Storman put his arms round Adam and brought him gently back into a sitting position. He weighed almost nothing. He started to ease his arms out of the blood-stained shirt but the exertion was too much. Adam began to retch horribly and his thin chest began to heave. He let out a ghastly cry and then vomited blood. Storman let him lie back down again and Adam began to cry. There was brick-dust in the blood.

  – I think we’d better get him a doctor.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  (Monday 30th December 1940)

  It’s the little things that give us away: unusual warmth – uncharacteristic harshness. For Storman, forced politeness was the most cracked of the masks: people not being entirely themselves. It was like a wrong note on a frequently played 78 – the sensation we feel when a key which had always turned smoothly in the lock inexplicably catches. We tremble when the sense of things is wrong, and lie awake at night looking for logic.

  Storman thought of detection – which was a job for the police – and cross-examination – which fell to him – and he saw how they overlapped like circles in a Venn diagram. He thought of those “join the dot” puzzles in the Saturday penny dreadfuls: a blank sheet of white paper covered in black spots. You joined the dots together to find the image concealed. But on Saturdays you could cheat: the relevant dots had numbers next to them. The rest remained anonymous as snow.

  In life – in the courtroom – there were very many dots and very few numbers. No road map. The facts were jumbled up, with little facts taking up more room than big facts and sometimes obscuring them entirely. And some of the dots were not flat and black but glittered with three-dimensional significance like diamonds. There was no cause and effect on the face of it, beyond those evident within the facts themselves. Observable facts, facts that would make up the dots on the landscape, paper-white or otherwise, tend to be physical. Emotions and feelings – the human factors – cannot easily be distilled into facts. The random magnetic impulse drifting beneath things, attracting or repelling and moving men and women in inexplicable ways, they were the dye that coloured a scene. The frame that gave a picture its proper perspective.

  The police, or the solicitors, would collect the random dots that were the facts and place them before Storman on a blank piece of paper. And they would ask him to persuade a judge or a jury how the dots joined up – to persuade him, or them, about cause and effect. He had thought much about detective work, and about cross-examination particularly, when joining the dots together in the Saturday puzzle. Sometimes he would ignore the numbers altogether and see wha
t he could produce without them. He realised, using different coloured pencils, that he could make the same random scattering of dots resemble, on the one hand, a Duchess riding in her coach and, on the other, the same Duchess being pleasured by her coachman. The two images lay across one another in different colours. He found them vaguely erotic. And he realised through the exercise how important the joining of the dots was. How important were cause and effect. How invisible in the equation were feelings, emotions … and motive.

  He shivered. After they had cleaned Adam up he’d put his overcoat back on. He moved over to the window and gazed down on the Norman steeple of the church. His breath frosted the glass. Barry had been gone for almost two hours. He hugged himself and found comfort in the warmth of the cashmere. Behind him Adam slept in fresh clothes and under additional blankets. The kitten was curled up at the bottom of the bed and the bloodied shirt was soaking in the sink.

  He turned from the window, his overcoat silhouette partially blocking the light, and looked down at his friend. He was glad he hadn’t been talking in his sleep. He thought about the joining of the dots. We all see things in different ways. It could be dangerous to join the dots.

  He thought back to the previous Monday: approaching Chambers from the Gardens he’d seen Jackson loitering around Cloisters and he’d hung back. Jackson was Jeremy’s favourite detective – Storman wasn’t sure why – and he’d noticed him lingering around Chambers with increasing frequency over recent months – his stomach sticking out from pillars or the brick of buildings. And then, three weeks ago, when looking at his own diary entries, he saw that Jeremy was marked for a private appointment. It was Jackson. He saw him slipping in. A barrister never met a witness without a solicitor present. There was no case name in the diary. Storman was not stupid, but he didn’t know where this particular trail was leading. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.