The decor of plaster pagodas and dog-like dragons bolstered the theme. As did the kitsch paintings of waterfalls, the Great Wall and junks in Hong Kong harbour. The place was festooned with paper lanterns.
‘Ingo, for a stick-in-the-mud, you occasionally surprise,’ declared Maude.
An attendant took their coats and a small fawning man in black pyjamas showed them to their table, weaving through a vibrant room where waiters bustled around, artfully toting huge trays of food and where meats were flamed and sizzled theatrically right in front of the diners.
‘Chopsticks?’ Maude panicked, toying gingerly with the porcelain utensils paired before her upon a small rest.
‘Part of the fun. You’ll soon get the hang of it…’
* * *
After a meal that had thoroughly met with Maude’s approval, washed down with a fine white burgundy, they ordered jasmine tea and engaged in small talk before pondering the journey home. The stains and scraps on the crimson linen tablecloth (more on Maude’s side than his, noted Finch triumphantly) bore testament to their enjoyment.
Finch excused himself, leaving Maude to flip through the dessert menu, and made his way to the gents. The white-tiled room was empty and Finch’s feet clicked on the floor as he strode to the furthest of the three urinals, stepping up onto the plinth, making a note to leave some coins in the gratuity dish by the washbasins on his way out.
As he began to relieve himself, a man entered, shoes echoing as Finch’s had. Finch was facing the wrong way to get a look but felt somewhat aggrieved that when the man approached the urinals, he chose not the furthest one from Finch, as decorum would dictate, leaving the free receptacle as a no man’s land, but stepped up to the one right next to him.
The man smelled of lavender. A discreet sideways glance told Finch he was dressed in a fine grey suit, with a cravat and silk kerchief in his pocket to match his refined scent. In the heart of bohemian London, and in the bold new world of the twentieth century, Finch didn’t think it so outrageous that he might be about to be propositioned by a person of the same gender, but considered it a tad optimistic on the man’s part that he should choose to do so in a busy restaurant of an early evening, especially when it was quite obvious that Finch was enjoying female company… Or maybe that was the challenge?
The man spoke, his business brisk and to the point.
‘Dr Finch,’ he said.
‘Pardon me… But have we met?’
Finch appreciated neither the approach nor the fact that he was addressing him sideways-on in an unfortunate situation. He couldn’t see his face.
‘Dr Finch, I will say this only once,’ he continued. ‘But the rules governing your liberty were abundantly clear – that you owe your freedom to a certain set conditions, one of which is that you are to desist from any activity that might be deemed injurious to the proceedings of His Majesty’s government.’
Finch willed himself to finish his urination and button himself up. He realised that the other man was not urinating at all.
‘Who the hell are you?’
‘I am here to advise you, Dr Ingo Finch, that you are to extricate yourself from such activities on pain of severe consequences.’
The man stepped down off the plinth.
‘I don’t understand,’ spluttered Finch, straining his head around.
The tone was now icy.
‘You understand perfectly well, Dr Finch…’
The man made to leave.
‘…If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pay your bill and see your way out of here… You have been warned.’
Finch desperately finished.
‘Oh, and one other thing,’ said the man, strutting out, only visible from behind. ‘…Mr Sidney Pickersgill. He is not all he seems.’
‘But who…?’
As Finch buttoned up, another man entered the bathroom, obscuring the lavender-scented man as he swung open the door, casually throwing some pennies into the dish. Finch caught a side glimpse of a pencil moustache.
‘And have a good evening,’ he added.
Finch rushed after him and saw him turn towards the exit but, in the crowded corridor, amid the customers and restaurant staff, he lost him. He hustled through them to the pavement and looked back and forth up and down Glasshouse Street but there was no sign.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ asked a waiter.
‘Sorry… wrong turn.’
Finch returned to wash his hands, then went back into the main dining area, head swimming.
Now a woman appeared to be calling him.
‘Finch,’ he heard. ‘Finch?’
What the hell had just happened? Had they had him under observation? All this time…?
The voice came again, louder.
‘Finch! It is you… Finch!’
He turned. Standing before him was someone he would never, in a million years, have imagined to be in his presence. And certainly not at this disconcerting moment. It even felt strange to say her name, but he blurted it out reflexively in a state of confusion and incredulity.
‘Annie?’
Chapter Seven
The sun had set over the striped tented village that had spread across Victoria Park. The aroma of chestnuts and hand-spun candyfloss wafted over the site, the pipe organs and screams of pleasure mixed in a sensory cocktail.
The illuminated lights of the rides – the roundabout, the helter-skelter, the big wheel – were reflected in the lake, midway between the gentrified terraces of Hackney and the lodging houses of Bow.
Mordecai and his friends had seen the young women before, nodding polite hellos on their way to the docks. There were three of them, ‘match girls’ from the Bryant & May factory. Dressed in aprons and pinafores then, they looked older now, more womanly – dolled up in their weekend finest, though still with the hunched, stiff-shouldered bearing of those who toiled on a production line.
No formal arrangement had been made to meet up. Indeed, save for ‘hellos’, none of them had every really spoken. But the lads had guessed they’d be in Victoria Park tonight. They had swapped knowing shoves and prods when they spotted them over by the alcoved seating, formed from the discarded parapets of the old London Bridge.
They had followed the girls into the Ghost House – a ludicrous palace of dangling string, fake skeletons and forced screams, where the promised ‘genies and goblins’ had failed to materialise. And now the dance continued, the girls this time lagging not too discreetly behind as the lads kept their over-exaggerated balance across the shifting boards of the cakewalk.
With five young men and only three young women, no one quite knew where their affections lay – maybe the girls had friends? But one of them – small, blonde, seemingly the more shy – gave a sheepish, kindly smile to Mordecai, evidently identified as a kindred spirit.
The lads weaved on, the girls came closer. Together they jostled through the melting pot of old and young; native and foreigner; top hat and baggy cap; bonnet and mop cap; soldier and sailor.
On the helter-skelter, wide-eyed kids whizzed down the chute on hessian sacking. On the great roundabout, powered by a belching steam traction engine, riders on white chargers shrieked and waved.
A man poked a mangy bear with a staff. The animal stood upright on hind legs, groaning against its muzzle, as a small terrier yapped at it. A midget one-man band played a lively ditty on a violin, simultaneously pulling a string to operate the bass drum on his back while crashing small cymbals between his knees.
Along the path, a member of the Malthusian League lectured on the principles of population while being harangued by a drunk. A Swedenborgian, standing on a wooden crate, declared the imminent advent of a new Church to sweep away the old. Not unrelated in Mordecai’s mind, a member of the Socialist International proclaimed the collapse of the capitalist order – ‘Let them cease with their ridiculous wars’ – and the vision of Karl Marx. Mordecai had heard enough of this man’s name back home to know that it usually spelled trouble.<
br />
A brisk woman trilled ‘Votes for Women’ and pressed into his hand – though he couldn’t read all of it – a leaflet denouncing Prime Minister Balfour. Mordecai instinctively threw it aside. He thought for a moment of the old country, where bad-mouthing anyone in authority could be met with a bullet to the back of the head.
Behind the park’s great ornate drinking fountain, the cheap vodka was passed around again. This time the girls were invited to sip. They took the bottle tentatively at first, like garden sparrows testing breadcrumbs in the palm of a gardener.
On the tram ride up from Stepney, one of the lads, Yan, who was older than the others and knew the ropes, had warned his pals to keep their voices down. Pole, Ukrainian, Czech, Baltic, Russian – the English could not tell the difference. Though with the bottle of vodka uncorked the moment they had got on board, the advice had been long since disregarded. As usual, Mordecai had refused a drink. Not so long ago, the others would have teased him about his abstemiousness. But they were less inclined to do so these days.
Some months back, on a Friday – payday – one of the dockyard gang, a lumbering, disapproving Muscovite called Andrei, had shoved Mordecai into the back of the warehouse – there to be held down by acolytes while he forcibly poured liquor down Mordecai’s neck.
Mordecai’s response had stunned everyone. As his triumphant assailant had turned, arms outstretched, eliciting the strained mirth of those who had been drawn in from the quayside, Mordecai had risen to his feet. Spluttering, soaking and with a fuzziness in his head that he was willing with all his power to go away, he had blind-sided Andrei with a flat-palmed chop to the throat. Not hard, just precise. The swing had connected his fingertips with Andrei’s Adam’s apple.
The man dropped instantly to his knees, pained, panicked, clutching his windpipe, gagging for air. A textbook application of an arm lock, with a thumb applied behind the ear, direct to the mastoid gland, had forced Andrei face down on the ground, weeping and begging for mercy. Andrei never returned to work. And no one had ever bothered Mordecai much since.
Most violence, or threats of violence, Mordecai knew, were theatrical, ritualistic, and he did his utmost to avoid physical confrontation. If young men were posturing, fists raised, while yelling at an opponent, it meant lines of communication were still open, the situation could still be defused. It was the silent and random violence, of which London offered much, that was the most difficult to fathom. He saw the newspaper stand – Britain and Russia: War Latest – and fancied that incidents against outsiders would be on the up.
It did not take long for the braggadocio of his own gang to work its way to the surface, fuelled by the vodka. It was the kind of habitual display that young men put on for young women – a chance to demonstrate their own prowess, placing themselves in a pecking order.
Mordecai declined an invitation to ‘ring the bell’ – a machine, in his estimation, inevitably fixed – letting his friends scrap it out over who could (or couldn’t) bring down the mallet the hardest upon the pad, one that sent a puck shooting up the groove in the post to (almost) strike the bell.
Instead he stood alone (though he sensed the presence of the blonde girl), transfixed by the giant Gavioli organ and the tin marionettes that moved robotically upon its façade.
Tuned into the lads and their displays of bravado, a barker was calling from a nearby stall.
‘Ten shots for a penny! Fancy your chances, lads? Win a prize for the lady!’
Duly suckered again, they took their turns with the air rifle, popping away at the eight tin ducks rotating into view on a wooden wheel, none with much success.
It was no use. Urged on, and unable to keep backing down, Mordecai stepped up to the challenge. Left-handed, he nestled the stock between his chin and shoulder and, with his designated ten shots, between a smooth but rapid snapping of the barrel to pump the compressed air, hit not just every duck in the centre of its body but, with the next shot, casually split the thin gold cord that sent a fluffy, stuffed rabbit falling into the arms of the blonde girl.
With a flourish and against a cry of ‘Now hold on!’ from the stall keeper, he sent the tenth vertically into the night sky. His mates cheered. The girl smiled. She was his if he wanted.
But Mordecai did not feel comfortable. He had the sense recently that someone was watching him, someone lurking in the shadows. He had felt it at the docks, that time after Andrei. He had discerned it in the street late at night when returning to his flophouse. And though this evening, amid the merriment, he had forgotten about it temporarily, someone was most definitely observing him now… their malevolent, unseen presence right there across the way.
A shiver ran down his spine. Cold sweat trickled down his brow. To the disappointment of his friends, and to the blonde girl in particular, Mordecai excused himself and left…
Chapter Eight
‘Finch… Say something… Finch?’
His head was in such a whirl, it took him a moment to comprehend.
‘I just…’
He remained impassive while she reached up and kissed him on the cheek, her lips brushing lightly.
‘You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’
‘Two ghosts, actually.’
The remark threw her. Her smile fell for a moment, then picked up.
‘Christ Finch, it’s good to see you,’ she enthused, as informally Australian as ever, touching his forearm for good measure. ‘What are you doing here?… I can’t believe it!’
‘What am I doing here? What are you doing here?’
He looked over her shoulder, scanning the dining room. Had the lavender man slipped back in?
‘Finch… Finch?’
There was no sign.
‘Something more interesting going on?’
‘Sorry.’
The imploring dark-brown eyes staring up at him were just as he remembered, as he cherished – no real-life let-down here from the fantasy. He stepped back and regarded her in full for the first time. She had on an elegant deep-silver outfit, gunmetal almost. In her pinned-up dark-brown locks was a long purple feather. There were pearls round her neck, on her ears, in her hair.
If he had thought a thousand times about what he might say or do if he ever saw her again, he had never envisaged a situation in which she wouldn’t command his full and absolute attention.
‘My God. Finch? I thought that perhaps you’d be just a little happy to see me… I mean, what are the chances?’
‘My apologies, Annie, it’s just that…’
He felt a tear straining at his eye – joy or frustration or both, he really couldn’t tell. Did the lavender man’s warning have anything to do with this very encounter? Finch felt foolish, and suddenly very rude. He overdid the conviviality and looked Annie up and down with over-familiar approval.
‘You look… I don’t know how quite to say it, but you look…’
He felt stupid immediately.
‘So there you are.’
It was Maude who was now at his side, clutching his elbow.
‘Oh… hello?’ she said, directing it at Annie.
He sensed curiosity rather than jealousy. But he was suddenly ashamed, embarrassed at Maude’s presence.
‘I’m sorry… introductions,’ he flustered. ‘Miss Maude Carter, Miss Annie Jones… formerly Nurse Annie Jones of the New South Wales Army Nursing Reserve…’
‘We were in South Africa.’
‘Quite a mouthful,’ said Maude, extending her ivory glove to shake Annie’s black velvet one.
‘Actually, it was the New South Wales Army Nursing Service Reserve – a mouthful and then some!’
Maude laughed. Annie turned to Finch.
‘And it’s not Jones any more.’
‘Oh,’ he said.
‘It’s Pointer.’
Finch looked down. Maude registered Finch’s discomfort. He thought she secretly relished it.
‘So, do you live here?’ Maude asked. ‘I mean, in London?’
‘Edward?’ repeated Finch under his breath.
‘…We’re on a sort of belated, extended honeymoon.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Maude.
‘He had business in Europe and the United States coming up… bit of a tour… so we thought we’d combine business with pleasure. Or should I say pleasure with business. Three months at sea. Stopped in Singapore, Madras, Alexandria… Where else…?’
It seemed to be enthusiasm rather than showing off.
‘…Oh, Malta,’ she gushed. ‘London’s the base for Europe, but we’ve also been to Paris, Berlin…’
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Maude.
‘Trust me. I say that to myself every day. It’s really not a life I ever envisaged. Truly. I have to pinch myself. I mean, a suite at the Savoy?!’
‘So how long have you two known—’
‘Since we were young, really. I mean it was difficult, me being away for so long, but then Edward, when I got back from South Africa—’
‘No I mean you two.’
Maude indicated Annie and Finch. Annie wrinkled her brow. She wasn’t sure of the implication.
‘I suppose we were pitched together during the war over… what, a couple of years…?’ she pondered. ‘Isn’t that right, Finch? Pretty much from 1900. The camp, then Cape Town… After that it was Kimberley for a bit. And then, well… the Transvaal…’
She seemed lost for a moment again.
‘…Some unpleasant things along the way.’
‘It was 1899,’ corrected Finch. ‘December 1899.’
How could she be so bloody casual about it?
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Until March 1902,’ he added, punctilious.
Annie nodded. She was fudging it, he knew, gently editing her own past.
‘I stayed on until the annexation,’ he reminded her, ‘but you… you were seconded with Major Jenkins, remember…?’
The Cold North Sea Page 5