by Helen Jacey
Six fat eggs, itching to hatch.
Instinctively I slip the gun under the pillow on the other side of the bed.
You don’t know him.
I throw off the dress and shoes, leaving my stockings and garters on and slip between the chilly sheets. The thick eiderdown is heavy and comforting.
A silver light flashes outside the window. I sit up, breathing fast. A bomb? Then an almighty crack of thunder splits the sky.
Billy is at the door. ‘Just a storm,’ he says.
11
Dawn. My mouth is dry as toast, my head groggy. London sparrows chirp outside. In the distance, bells. The bells of every church in London, ringing triumphantly.
So here we are. Not entwined as we once would have been; now there are at least four inches between us, a polite distance.
The sex was a frantic truce, like a game of football in no-man’s-land. Efficient, a temporary fix.
In the night, I woke, aware of a smell of burning, just cigarette smoke. I didn’t turn, pretended to be asleep. I felt his finger trace the puce ridges of the scars on my arm. His breathing was shallow as he examined it.
All that and I still kept my mouth shut.
I pretended to stir, to shake him off me. It was only sex, and I would be leaving.
Next he slid his hand under the pillow, feeling for the gun. He didn’t remove it. Who is this man who doesn’t care if the woman next to him shoots his brains out while he sleeps?
Now the strangeness hangs heavy between us, like dirty tulle curtains. Breakfast could be awkward.
I haven’t forgiven him, not a bit, and now I am completely at his mercy. If Billy is right, and people don’t change, then sex should make him honor the deal. He must know I need him as much as I’m using him. I’m pitiable.
Where will he stash me away while he sorts things out? Hopefully somewhere empty, hopefully somewhere with a fire.
A rum situation indeed. Funny what peace brings.
The knocking is loud and insistent. I must have dropped off again. Billy’s girl? He is already up, in his dressing gown. He shoots me a fierce look. ‘Nobody knows you’re here? Just Betty?’
I shake my head. So he trusts Betty, but not me. I never talked, so no one will look here. His fear is irrational.
Billy hesitates. He clearly wants the gun under the pillow but won’t say. Is he expecting trouble? I say nothing, clutching the eiderdown. He limps out, closing the bedroom door after him. I jump up, stark naked, straining to listen at the door. Billy’s footsteps head to the living room first.
He is getting the other gun.
A minute later he shuffles back along the hall. The chain scrapes off the lock, opening onto a volley of loud Italian voices. Two, maybe three men? They are speaking too fast, with harsh and insistent words – this is no victory party. Billy says, ‘No, sono solo.’ He says it loud enough for the neighbors to hear. It is only meant for me.
Don’t leave the room.
They are persistent, entering the flat. The front door slams shut. Billy sounds placatory. It isn’t working. The voice that answers him is flat, unimpressed, repressing anger.
As they move down the hall, Billy’s voice becomes more indignant, denying something with good humor. Bluffing. Suddenly, one of the men chuckles. Then there’s embracing, kissing, and Italian backslapping all round. I sigh with relief.
Billy says, ‘Caffè?’ and the others enthusiastically assent.
I can slip under the bed or wriggle through the window and cling to the ledge while the social call plays itself out. My clothes are strewn over the floor. The blue dress lies crumpled, the color not as fresh as I thought. In the cold light of day, it’s a dull blue. Porcelain blue with mud slung in the glaze. I fling it on.
A muffled sound outside the bedroom. I freeze. A shot?
I go back to the door, straining to listen. No. It can’t be. Damn those church bells!
I snatch the gun from under the pillow and tiptoe back to the door. The clock ticks in competition with my pounding heart. My hand shakes over the door handle but I gently twist it an inch open.
Someone groans. Billy? One of the men yells, ‘Dov’è…?’
This is followed by a thud, a sharp kick in the ribs? More shouting. Billy groans again. He’s shot, I know it. Pure instinct takes over. Forget payback. Billy is dying. I have to help him. Without thinking, I push the door wider and creep out into the hall, shoeless and pistol poised. The door to the living room is wide open. A man’s voice growls low, repeating itself.
I peer in.
Billy lies on his front, his head yanked up in the vicelike grip of a young Italian man. He’s got a pistol with a silencer pressed against Billy’s temple! Billy’s face ashen, his eyes rolling around and his mouth dangling open – a huge bloodstain spreading over his back – sodden silk – he’s dying! The killer’s face – mean, determined. He’s a baby, really, all of eighteen years? He’s dapper. Very.
An older guy, surely the muscle, larger, a mess… No, he’s the killer! He’s aiming, ready to fire again – a cold-blooded execution!
They haven’t seen me. Should I hide? No, find me, they’ll kill me. Can I force them to leave? A warning shot? Kill them? I don’t want to! I just can’t.
But the boy sees me. He shouts, and raises his gun. Who fires first? The guns are loud, and I’m thrown back. The bullet instantly drives though his forehead, his head flying back, cracking the wall. I spin around. The other man lurches at me, eyes bulging, firing! I lunge out of the way, safe. Breathless, I shoot again, hitting his leg. He collapses, his gun falling on the rug. He clutches his thigh, screaming.
Thank God for the church bells.
Panting, I keep my gun on him, glancing at the younger man. His body has crumpled and lies at an angle, sagging and lifeless. I’ve killed him. A boy. I feel sick. The larger man flounders in agony. What should I do? Help him? The blood oozes through his fingers under the ripped flannel trouser. He whimpers, his eyes are manically rolling with pain. I go over, kick his gun out of his reach, yelling, ‘Uscire o ti ammazzo!’ The language was always in me, just buried.
He heaves himself up, lumbering. His skin is sickly white but he gets the message, all right. He lollops towards the door. Will I regret this? He knows my face. He’s a mobster. I’ve killed one of their own. Billy’s dying. They’ll be back.
Yes, I will regret it.
Fuck him!
I fire at his back. He crumples, heavily. As he hits the floor, a bone cracks.
His body lies slumped on its side, his head at an angle upwards.
Billy! I run to him. He is motionless, face down, his cheek against the rug. His eyes flickering at me, his breath shallow and fast. His irises roll, as he tries to focus.
‘Don’t move. I’ll get help.’ I can tell the publican and flee. There is no other choice.
Billy’s hand gropes for mine, fingers pressing into mine. His mouth opens slowly, trying to form words. A fractured whisper comes out. I bend my head closer. ‘I can’t hear you.’
‘Bedroom… Go… They will…’ His face flushes, his grip loosens. His eyes go blank.
‘Billy!’ I feel for a pulse.
He is gone.
12
I have killed only once before in my life. At least, I may have. I will never know for sure. I was thirteen. I’d knifed him in the belly with a small penknife, and scarpered. I never found out what happened to him. Maureen O’Reilly, who had taken me under her wing, said he got what he deserved, but we never saw him again.
Several years later, I told Billy about it. He’d taken me to Ashdown Forest every weekend for three weeks and taught me how to shoot. I was a good shot. Billy had been impressed and I liked the fact he was pleased with me.
Billy’s head now lies on my lap. It’s heavy and cold. Great shudders take me over every few minutes. It’s so cold after the storm, after the killings.
Below, a rowdy street party is in full swing. The only sound inside is the ticking
clock.
Move it. Get the hell out if you want to live.
The bells and the boozing below must have prevented anyone realizing a shootout was taking place in the top flat. I lower his head to the floor. I can’t move fast, my limbs are so weak. The puddle of blood on the carpet has dried at the edges. The air is rancid with the odor of fresh shit.
I somehow manage to stand up with jelly legs. Hands shaking, I find Betty’s packet of smokes, and pull out a cigarette, staring at the bodies. Sunshine illuminates the boy’s pallid face, making the tramlines of rusty blood running down his face appear to glitter. His eyes are still open, the whites flushed with scarlet, clashing with the amber of his irises. God, he’s young. That it was him or me is not much comfort.
What did Billy want to tell me?
In the bedroom, the bedside tables have nothing else of interest. I already have the gun.
I open the big wardrobe. Lurking behind some men’s suits, a large suitcase lies against the back. I pull it out. Inside, it is stuffed full with women’s clothes. Several summer dresses and two lightweight suits, one cream, one dark blue. A few silk blouses, some plain, some printed. All tailored, all expensive fabrics. No ration jobs here. The suitcase’s side pocket contains packets of silk stockings, and satin underwear.
Billy’s girl’s?
Underneath the lot, there’s a deep indigo satin evening gown adorned with sequins, beads and tiny seed pearls. I pull it out. The words Jacques Faliere, Paris are embroidered on an ivory silky label. Next to the suitcase, two shoeboxes and a hatbox. I lift the lids of each. Unworn women’s leather shoes. A brown pair for daytime, and satin ones for evening. Top quality.
In the hatbox, a woman’s stylish hat. It’s never been worn. I put it on, and it fits.
Billy’s girl has class and now she is helping me escape. I’ll take it with me. Expensive wardrobe, ironic that I don’t have a penny but maybe the former will fix the latter.
Wait. Billy would hide things under the floor. Money, weapons, anything he didn’t want other people to find. I will him to have kept to his habits as I pull up the rug and kneel down, using my nails to test the give of each board. Finally, one gives.
My fingers grope around the dark cavern. Dusty rubble and broken laths. Hard balls of crumbling plaster.
But something else.
It’s smooth. Paper? Pinching a corner, I manage to lift a brown envelope, thickly coated in dust. Inside, there are several notes in different currencies – dollars, pounds, and francs. Fresh off the press and, knowing Billy, probably counterfeit. And a passport, a US passport. I flick it open.
What the hell?
My face stares back at me.
The name, Constance Evangelina Muriel Sharpe.
Why on earth hadn’t Billy just given it to me? Why the charade of hiding me away for a day? It was here the whole time. Waiting for a good moment to give it to me? Waiting for sex? What game was he playing, if he’d already come good?
The clothes, too.
He got these for you?
I fling myself back on the bed, in turmoil. Why the silence? Why the game?
Even dead, he is one step ahead.
Time to run. Somebody, somewhere, will miss the dead. If they come looking now, that’s it for me. Wipe everything down. I drag the bottom sheet from the bed and bundle it up. The bottle of tablets I noticed the night before still sits on the bedside table. I examine it. Practically empty. Morphine hydrochloride tablets. I stuff the bottle into my bag.
Back in the living room, I rummage through the younger man’s pockets, my hands shaking, pulling out a wad of handwritten letters, all in Italian. A creased Ministry of War document states he was Paolo Salvatore, a registered POW. He must be older than eighteen, then. There’s a lighter, engraved with PS, and a roll of pound notes. An Italian POW in fine clothes? Maybe his stretch ran for the same years as mine. Our new lives colliding on VE Day, but I’m the one with freedom.
Seldon was right. Avoid the people you were protecting. Now look. But I’m not responsible for Billy and his dealings. This is just bad timing, right? The Italians can’t have come here looking for me. I am of no consequence to anybody; I know nobody, I have nothing they want.
I move over to the larger man. He carries no papers, just a large knife sheathed under his belt. His clothes are old, and stink of stale cigar smoke. Young Paolo must have come higher in the pecking order. A boss’s son?
I find the scotch and glug from the bottle. I quickly wipe everything else down. Glasses, the door, the side tables. The fat one’s prints on the gun might usefully confuse matters if and when the coppers arrive. Soon the bodies will stink. The carnage cannot go undiscovered for long.
As I work, I run a mental checklist.
One, Billy was in hot water and it is nothing to do with me. They had come to mow him down. Somebody wanted him dead, and they were after something.
Two, Billy had arranged papers and money, maybe even a whole wardrobe of top notch clothes, but he was in no hurry to tell me. Not even after sex. Why bide his time? Did he think I’d throw it all back in his face?
Yes, you would have.
Maybe after the long separation, he still knows me better than I know myself.
Three. It is only a matter of time before the shooting and my face are splattered all over the newspapers. Only Betty can link the two – Jemima Day, missing convict, and Ida Boyd, former girlfriend to the dead Billy. The old Betty would stay out of it, minding her own business as ever, but this one is a stranger. Even if she knew Billy was in hot water with this gang, would she have the guts to point the finger at them? No. I’m a stranger to her, after all.
If Betty implicates me, and I’m caught, I’ll have a triple murder pinned on me, and the hangman will be curling his noose around my neck in no time.
Four, if I don’t move now, the Mob could bust in and kill me before any of that happens.
Five… Five, a question. How does the sophisticated Yankee Mrs. Connie Sharpe jump on a boat back home before someone mistakes her for a wanted spy, or a parole jumper, or a former moll, or a Mob killer? I need to lie low. How? And where?
Bloody good questions.
I will have to work them out as I run.
Six. It is time to say goodbye.
Billy’s mouth, bluish now, is partly open. I close it, for decency’s sake.
He always observed the niceties of life. Sunny smiles and goodbyes.
You never know what might happen out there, he used to say. Never go to sleep after a barney, in case you die in your sleep.
Once upon a time, he’d been mine. Today I couldn’t save him or stay to bury him. I am leaving him as I found him. A stranger, for whom other strangers will give whatever send-off they think he deserves.
Maybe Betty will see him off all right.
Please, Betty. Have a heart.
I kneel down and lightly kiss him goodbye on the cheek.
‘Thanks for sorting me out.’
I feel warm tears filling my eyes.
Real tears.
Outside, the sunlight dazzles and the air is crisp after the storm. The revelers have exhausted themselves, some sprawling on the pavement, next to vomit pools and Union Jacks strewn like patriotic litter. Others sit in huddles, arms draped around each other. Nobody notices me.
Ahead, blue smoke billows from a fire on the Green. I pass a man up a ladder. He’s tying a string of ancient and moldy bunting to a drainpipe. He waves at me. I wave back brightly, doing my best to act as if I haven’t just committed a double killing and witnessed a third.
I head towards the smoke.
Nobody is tending the biggest of the bonfires. Couples lie in each other’s arms, bathed in the dying heat. I edge nearer, and toss the sheet into the embers. The linen catches quickly, the cotton yellowing then blackening, before it frays into fragments of ash. They float gently up and away from the ravenous flames.
Gray confetti, for a marriage that never was.
RIP
Billy.
A steady and growing stream of people flock towards central London. I slip in amongst them.
Only the mannequins in Betty’s window watch me leave.
Victory protects me, and I am finally grateful for it.
13
Los Angeles, September 1945
‘Like the joint?’ The female cab driver pulled up on the other side of the street.
I glanced out of the window up at the hotel building, solid and bland brick, with a couple of squat palms on a front terrace. ‘Sure, looks fine,’ I said, without thinking about it.
The name The Miracle Mile Hotel was elegantly coiled in unlit neon tubes adorning the top of the solid deco building, a tiara on an elephant. It was hardly up there with the luxury hotels, places that tempted me but which would soon gobble up my remaining fake dollars.
I had to pace myself, and I was hot, hungry and tired from the journey here on the Super Chief. In less than ten minutes, I could be lying in a hot bath, knocking back a glass of something cold and bubbly. Shopping around for hotels with this chatterbox of a driver was not top of the to-do list.
‘Classy place, not full of wannabes. Say Sal told you about it.’
I got out and paid Sal, adding a big tip for the fact she saw me as classy. She touched her cap and flew off.
The L.A. heat rolled over me like lava. I was dressed in a black suit, and I quickly put on my sunglasses. Months on the run and I still felt like an Albino rat, scared of the light, scurrying off to hide in dark holes.
‘No vacancies.’ Mrs. Loeb, as her name badge announced, didn’t even bother looking up from behind her heavy gold spectacles. She was engrossed in the crossword. Her dyed auburn hair and the lavish amount of costume jewelry dangling from her ears and neck reminded me of a Christmas tree.
I dropped Sal’s name. ‘Sal, huh? I don’t care if Eleanor Roosevelt sent you. If we’re full, we’re full.’ A woman who flexed her muscles any time of day and I was fresh meat to pummel. She still didn’t bother to look up. I wouldn’t give this bitch the satisfaction of pleading with her.