by Helen Jacey
I make my voice slightly posher in compensation. The elocution lessons from a well-meaning foster mother come in handy yet again. ‘Love trouble. You see the queue in there?’
The girl follows my eyes, nodding. There’s an older man in the queue, reading a newspaper. ‘See the gent at the end, with the paper? That’s Cecil, my boyfriend. He bought me the ring. Cost a bob or two.’
‘You’re jilting him?’ She’s sucked into the drama.
I roll my eyes. ‘No. I’m actually married. My husband, Henry, has been missing in action for years. I assumed the worst. Only took up with Cecil because he cheered me up. But I got a telegram today. They found Henry. Not only that, he’s arriving today. Cecil thinks he’s taking me to his cousin’s in Sussex but I have to give him the slip. I simply can’t face telling him!’ I lowered my voice, whispering frantically. ‘Henry’s military train has just come in. The poor fellows are lined up over there on Platform One. Henry’s completely lost his memory, trapped in a POW camp for years. Worst of all, he’s lost a leg. I would have never have started anything with Cecil had I known. I’ve got to shake him off somehow.’
The girl’s eyes widen. Is she taking the bait? I say, ‘Look, take the ring. Sit here in my coat and hat. It will give me time to collect Henry and just go. If Cecil comes over, just say you noticed a woman had a very similar coat as you and you think that she headed towards Platform Eight. He’ll go off, while I slip away to get Henry. For your sterling efforts, you get the ring and my eternal gratitude! I’ll write to Cecil, and explain. He’s a decent fellow, but I just can’t do it now. Please help me, but we have to be quick. I can’t leave Henry waiting a moment longer.’
I’m rusty as hell. It’s fifty-fifty. In the ticket office, Doodlebag is about to be served. Sod this! I should just run. I will have to if she hesitates a moment more. One last-ditch attempt. ‘Cecil’s loaded, the type that likes to show a girl a good time. You’re a pretty girl. Let him. Just don’t show him the ring!’ I wink. ‘Here, try it on. The pearls are real.’
She glances at the ring, then to the chap inside, and then to me. ‘All right.’
‘Here you are.’ I sound as calm as I can. I pass the ring to her.
The way she admires her finger, there’s a good chance it’s not coming off again. ‘Suits you,’ I say. Time is running out.
Make up your mind, goddamn you!
‘All right. I’ll keep it.’
It’s too soon to let relief take over, but I want to kiss her. ‘You’re a doing a very good deed. Quickly, now! Stand up, keep your back to me. That’s right. Eyes on Cecil and take your jacket and hat off.’
The codger remains completely engrossed in his paper. Doodlebag is at the counter. The girl moves fast, slipping off her jacket. I pass her my coat. ‘Too warm for May, but it’s quality.’ She can chuck it in the bin for all I care. We finish up with our hats. She keeps her gold hatpin, though, with a pearl end. It was her granny’s, she says. ‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
‘Elvira. Everyone calls me Ellie.’
‘Thank you, Ellie.
She is still entranced by her finger. ‘I got the better end of the deal. Should be thanking you, more like.’
Ellie will be picked up, questioned. They will do their best to brand her my accomplice. But how can they? Hopefully her total ignorance about me will help.
Say you just felt sorry for me. Repeat my sob story.
She’d be an idiot to mention the ring. They don’t know it exists. I have a feeling she won’t and will stick to the pity angle.
Looking like just like Jemima Day, newly released convict, Ellie sits on the bench.
Looking like somebody else I have yet to discover, I speed towards the large stone archway, through the crowds. Pigeons amassing for commuters’ crumbs scatter in my wake.
I am running and have no regrets.
I will find Billy. I will demand compensation.
Then I will go back to the only place I have memories of sunshine, of playing, of friends, of something that could have been happiness.
America.
8
Once a fraud, always a fraud.
Seldon’s face haunts me; my determined criminality, reverting to old habits at the first chance I have, will sting her.
Wise up, lady.
The side streets winding away from the Waterloo Road are safer. Bomb craters are everywhere, creating a bizarre and ugly landscape. If Doodlebag is quick off the mark, details of my escape and my mugshot could make tomorrow’s papers. Prisoner absconds. Somebody might recognize my face and put two and two together.
Isn’t that Ida Boyd, Billy Martin’s girl?
I am a wanted woman.
Running confirms their stupid belief I’m a fascist. If I’m caught, they won’t go as easy on me as before. A few cigarette burns could be replaced by the noose. Seldon didn’t say it, but that was what she meant.
The noose. I can’t think about it now. A seizure of panic won’t do me any favors.
Predictably, the shoes don’t help. The high heels, now caked in dust, wobble and slide over the cobbles. Taking them off would be faster, but looking like a tramp, or like a lunatic, is out of the question. I have to blend in. I belong out here. I am normal.
The authorities do not know I lived for five long years as Ida Boyd, gangster’s moll. When they caught me, I gave my real name, Jemima Day. Telling them I was Ida Boyd could have led them to Billy if they’d put enough effort into it, and he’d have gone down, or even worse. Even in my shock at being caught, the pledge of silence held, Billy had drilled it in that good. It didn’t take my captors long to check that Jemima Day was one and the same as the orphan, the street urchin, the juvenile offender, the reform school girl, the foster kid. Jemima Day’s troubled life suited the Secret Service agents’ most likely final conclusion: that a common piece of muck like me would do anything for money, even some fascist’s bidding.
But they couldn’t be sure, could they?
So down I went. Down the Holloway rabbit hole.
Now my pledge with Billy is just an insurance policy I can claim on.
Everywhere, people are getting ready for victory parties. Spirits are high, lonely old ladies hover in their doorways, smiling and waving. Their hallways look inviting and homely. I could talk my way into any of these. Get a decent cuppa, a cheese sandwich. From some open window, the crackly, happy sounds of a big band. I’m transported back to our dance hall days, me and Billy all dressed up, stars of the dance floor.
Screw him.
I pass the back-to-back slums. Some rows turn into wastelands, boarded-up fences with Danger sloshed on them in paint. Behind, bare structures of houses somehow stand erect, their innards ripped out, chimneys dangling like ripped windpipes, whole sides blasted off. Birds have claimed these as safe havens, their nests gather in nooks.
Fucking Hun. Why pick on us? People here aren’t rich; they will take years to get back on their feet.
Raging inwardly, I suddenly trip over a bloody sandbag hanging over what was left of a gutter. As I fall, something catches me.
Two uniformed arms. A man’s arms.
A copper?
‘Somebody’s not looking where she’s going.’
An ARP warden, fifty-odd. His blunt fuse wire for hair juts out from beneath his cap. Breathing into my face, holding me tight. The smell is man, pungent with pipe smoke and sweat.
I grin. ‘Oops-a-daisy! Miles away.’ My guts churn.
He smiles. His eyes are as hard as the screws’ but they are hungry, too, roaming over my breasts. ‘Watch your step, poppet. Be a shame to twist your ankle on a night like this. We’re all going to be dancing tomorrow.’
I bounce into dumb blonde mode. It’s been five years, but it is like riding a bicycle.
‘Ta very much. I will.’
Let the hell go of me.
‘You all right? He peers at me. ‘Nothing broken? Want me to check?’ His hand slides down my backside.
I
tense. ‘Right as rain. In a hurry, if you don’t mind.’
‘Where to?’
‘A friend’s house. I don’t have a wireless. Want to listen.’
‘Where does your friend live?’
Any minute now he will be asking for my papers. ‘Camberwell Road,’ I reply, without thinking.
‘Camberwell Road,’ He repeats. ‘It’s a long road. Whereabouts?’
I want to say 598. Why? The only number that comes to mind. Betty’s dress shop. But it would be stupid to say where I’m really heading. I say 72. Let’s hope 72 isn’t known to have been obliterated. I pray to the god of lies.
‘Give us a kiss, ducky.’
A kiss? He doesn’t care where I’m going.Welcome back to the world of men and their liberties. His face looms over mine, his beard glinting.
Suddenly, a yell smashes through the darkness. A man’s voice, loud and belligerent. A woman screams back. A pair of drunks having a ding-dong.
The warden reluctantly releases his pressure on my arm. He shouts out, ‘Oi! What’s all that racket about, then? Pipe down!’
The woman tells him to piss off. Wrong move, lady. Right for me. The ARP warden bristles. His ego and the uniform won’t allow him to ignore the insult. ‘Like that, is it?’
He struts off, full of self-importance. I relax. So my lucky streak still runs.
I dart down the first alley I come to, and collapse against the wall. It’s only then I heave, throwing up. Nothing but bile comes out.
You’re fine. Don’t waste time. Move!
I reach the Walworth Road, a blister the size of a gobstopper on my heel.
Suffield Road is a minute away. My last known address. I can just look, can’t I? I won’t go as far as my house, just take a peek. My house. Our home. The place Billy would lay his hat when he felt like it. After my arrest, he’d have made sure nothing was left lying around the house linking me to him. The authorities must have ransacked the place.
But what about Kettle? If Billy has left the cat to fend for himself, it’s a double betrayal.
I brace myself, approaching the corner of Manor Place. I stop. Disorientated, I don’t know where I am. Another rubble meadow replaces most of the road where the terrace of brick houses once stood. All gone. It must have been one of Jerry’s monsters. All those people, those families. Faces I haven’t thought about for years come back to me.
I venture to the empty space where Number 37 should have been.
A crater for a home.
Icing on the cake.
The realization suddenly hits me that Billy could be dead. All this effort, and it hadn’t occurred to me he could be gone. Billy was a born survivor.
Takes one to know one.
I stand still, frozen to the spot. He wouldn’t have gone here, to the house. He wouldn’t have been in the vicinity when Jerry hit. After they caught me, he wouldn’t risk it. He would assume I would talk, break the pledge. He’d have laid low. Until the weeks turned into months, and he put two and two together, realized that I wasn’t going to grass on him. The pledge stayed firm. Billy would laugh, he’d work out my reasoning, too. He would know I’d expect a payout on my release.
He cannot be fucking dead!
Dusk is falling, but not fast enough. I limp through the shadows, away from the dead space, away from the ghosts.
Billy used to limp, lame from childhood polio, so he dodged the conscription bullet. Even if they have tried to put him to use in the Home Guard, filing or something ridiculous, he will have wriggled out of that, too. I never saw him put himself at anyone’s mercy. Not even thank anybody. Not for lack of manners, the occasion just never demanded his gratitude. ‘Fetch us a pot of tea, love,’ delivered as if he was doing you a favor. ‘Marvelous,’ he’d smile. But never a ‘thank you’.
Billy was boss, simple as that.
When I met him at sixteen, I believed the world owed me a living. I’d roughed it long enough, thank you very much, and here was my own sugar daddy to make everything all right. I’d happily spend his money, doll myself up, hang on his arm in return for my life of Riley. He was indulgent, but later my more frivolous moments would annoy him. He couldn’t hide it. And when the money dried up, war was declared, and he and all the other Italians we knew were banged up, he came out different. Changed. Bitter. Reserved. They all did. Even smiling Betty. They all took offence at being made to feel like the enemy by the country they called home. Billy had new friends, a new set of spivs. He’d go off for days. To Little Italy, people said, when I called at his club at the Elephant. Then he’d return, with new men in tow. Men with black hair, sharp suits, teeth as sallow as their skin, chain-smokers the lot. They didn’t smile at me, and I didn’t smile back. I nicknamed them the Sour Grapes. Billy didn’t like that.
Sugar daddy, lover, fiancé, cad, liar. If what Billy and I had was love, it was the type that bites you in the ankle, leaving you to bleed out. Plain and simple. He set me up and left me to rot.
But Billy a fascist traitor? I can’t see it. Like me, South London blood ran through his veins. Like me, his political convictions didn’t run deep.
But you don’t know him anymore. You haven’t known him for years.
Inside, other inmates got correspondence, even if words had been blacked out. Billy could have written in code with a false address or identification. ‘Auntie Prudence’ or suchlike. But he hadn’t. Not a dicky bird. I wondered what he was saying to the few people who knew we were still an item, how he explained my disappearance. ‘Took off in a huff, stupid bitch.’ Is there a new woman? He can have a few on the go for all I care.
He’ll have plenty of money stashed now, I can bet on that.
I have to find him.
I shudder, from cold, from hunger, from fear of capture.
From the new winds of change.
He has to be alive.
9
Betty Pizzi’s dress shop, called Betty’s, sits in a small parade on the Camberwell Road. She never cared what her customers got up to so long as they paid up every quarter and liked a bit of glamour to their dresses. Which was a good thing, as most of her clientele were South East London crooks’ floozies, dressed to the nines on tick, bankrolled by boyfriends who ran with the Elephant Boys or the Messina Brothers. Betty worked hard and never mentioned her hometown of Naples. Rumor had it she ran away from a husband and child there when she was sixteen. A busy sparrow of a woman, a needle in her mouth, and a twinkle in her eye until they interred her.
If she is still around, she’ll know Billy’s whereabouts. She was one of the few people who knew we were an item because he settled my account with her. And until she catches sight of my mugshot in the papers, Betty Pizzi is my only chance.
The familiar mannequins in the shop window stare into space, posing in dreary dresses gathering dust. The fabric looks cheap. I never wore a Utility number. All my dresses and gowns were expensive leftovers from the late Thirties, or off the ration when Billy felt like treating me. Less and less often in the later years.
The blackout curtains are wide open, and several window panes replaced with painted black wood. There are small signs pinned to these, but I can’t make them out. The glow of a weak light bulb is visible in the upstairs window. Somebody’s home.
I knock on the door. Silence. The kind when someone inside is debating if they should open the door.
The creak of an internal door and the reluctant scrape of the chain.
Betty’s familiar eyes. The lids more papery, hanging lower over her dark irises. The same pale gold crucifix around her neck. Faded hair with strands of pure white, thick like cotton. She must be late fifties now and her sallow face has a collapsed look about it.
‘It’s me, Betty. Ida Boyd.’
I get a blank expression in return. ‘Billy’s girl.’ I hate the words. ‘Can I come in? Just for a minute?’
She thinks about it, giving nothing away. ‘I thought you were dead.’
Dead. Not sent down.
I have to play it safe. ‘So what blighter says I’m dead? Billy? That’s a bloody cheek, considering he sent me packing.’ I do my best to look indignant.
It’s a gamble. But a gamble that tallies up with whatever she knows. Betty Pizzi opens the door.
A tiny fire burns in the small grate. Betty stands in the door, gesturing for me to sit down. I obey, grateful to get the weight off the blister. Her old sofa is a billowy cloud and I fight off a wave of exhaustion.
‘You never come here, nobody sees you in years. Are you sick?’ She looks me up and down. If she knows about prison, she’s doing a good job of pretending otherwise.
Yes, I’ve changed. And so have you. But we won’t share war stories, will we?
I smile, shaking my head. ‘Right as rain.’ Now for the real test. ‘I split with Billy. Been on a Land Army farm, up North. Wrecked my nails.’ I grimace, waving my dirty fingertips around.
‘A farm? You?’ Betty’s brows dance into her forehead.
‘Not much choice. Didn’t want to stick around here, did I?’
She takes it in and leaves the room. So far, so good.
I call out, ‘How are things with you?’
‘Business is terrible. Nobody has a penny,’ she calls back. I can hear her clattering around in her kitchen. She returns, like Mother Christmas, with a box of ciggies and a bottle of French brandy. ‘A blast from a very big bomb broke all my windows. My big shop window. My glasses. Everything. The only thing not broken? This bottle. It’s a miracle. So I save it for peace. I do not like to drink alone, and you are here, the night before peace. Maybe you are a miracle.’ She smiles, and I get a flash of the old Betty.