by Mark Dawson
“Fine. Where?”
“I’ll be in The Griffin tomorrow evening. The same time as yesterday. Can I expect to see you?”
Harry stood. The conversation was over. “You can,” he said.
9
GEORGE CAME UP to Harry’s room. It was the top floor back and it was still dark, the curtain drawn over the narrow arrow-slit of a window. The room was just under the eaves and, with its sloping ceiling, it reminded Harry of a wedge of cheese. He felt his way to the gas jet and lighted it. The gas spluttered until it caught, the mantles gradually whitening, the resultant faint glow just sufficient to send the shadows into the corners. Their breath clouded before their faces. The room was small and yet still too big to be warmed properly by one defective oil lamp; it promised to be icy when winter really started to bite. It was furnished when Harry had taken it, at least in a fashion: a small, broken-backed bed with a holed patchwork quilt and sheets that were changed once a month; a deal table; a rickety kitchen chair; a gas ring in the fender. The floor was covered by peeling linoleum, bugs scurrying amid the cracks; there was a wash stand with jug and basin and a chamber pot. The room directly below housed a woman with a baby which cried all night; on the same floor was a young couple whose quarrels were so loud that they could be heard all over the house. When money was tight––which was practically all the time––Harry would come home from work and light the fire (when he could afford the sixpenny bags from the grocer’s) and get the stuffy little room passably warm. George would sometimes join him and they would sit together over a meal of bacon, stale bread and margarine and tea, cooked over the gas-ring. Harry would read a cheap thriller that he had borrowed for tuppence from the mushroom library on the Clerkenwell Road and George would do the Brain Brighteners in Tit Bits until the puzzles were all done, the fire was banked and they had turned in for the night. It was a depressing existence.
He took the oil lamp from the table and lit the wick; it would make for a little extra warmth and he would be able to use it to boil some water so that he could brew some tea for them both.
“You’re not going to work?”
“Not today. I need to think.”
“Not like you need to do it any more, is it?”
“Probably not. But there’ll be other houses––I’ve already found another. I said I was sick. I’ll go in tomorrow if they’ll still have me.”
George sat down on the single chair. “What a mess.”
Harry checked the kettle; it was slowly warming. “What do we do?”
“We pay him.”
Harry shrugged. “Why?”
“Are you serious? Because that’s what you do. You pay men like him.”
“What happened to you, George? You would never have rolled over like this when we were younger. Remember what you did when I said you owed me a farthing for sweets?”
“That was different.”
“You beat me black and blue. Father had to separate us. How is this any different?”
“We were children then,” he snapped. “Scarpello is a dangerous man. You might not think so, you’ve been away, maybe you think now that you’ve shot a few Hun everything is easy, but it isn’t. This is the real world, Harry. This isn’t children’s games. He’s shot people who have stood up to him before. You’d hear a rumour––so-and-so won’t pay––and then you don’t see them any more. He knows about us. He knows about our family. We have to pay him.”
Harry brewed the tea. “Alright,” he conceded. “We’ll pay him.”
“Fifty.”
“It’s a lot. Are you still seeing your man this morning?”
“Eleven.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ll need the money. I’ll go and pay Scarpello.”
“We’ll do it together.”
“No,” Harry said firmly. “I’ll do it.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“It has to be that way, George. I won’t agree to it otherwise.”
The oil lamp popped and went out.
There was concern on George’s face. “What are you going to do?”
“Pay him. And I’ll explain why this squares us off for good.”
“He won’t listen.”
“I’ll make him.”
“It’s a bad idea, Harry.”
Below them, Mrs. Weaver sounded the gong for breakfast.
“I’m not going to do anything foolish. You just need to trust me. Alright?”
10
HARRY WALKED. He took out his packet of cigarettes, shook one free and lighted it. It was not particularly enjoyable and, when he thought on it, it put him in mind of a condemned man’s last smoke before being herded out to the gallows and the six foot drop. He had a few hours before his appointment with Scarpello and he always did his best thinking while he was outside. He had a destination in mind but no chosen route to get there; he would just walk. He headed southward, through the wastes of Hatton Garden and the cold glitter of the jewellers’ windows, then down the Gray’s Inn Road. Dusk had fallen and the sky was darkening still. He was overtaken by a lamp lighter on his bicycle, a row of lighted lamps stretching back down the road behind him. He would already have lost his job, of course, one couldn’t be absent this long and expect it still to be waiting when you came back. But that was alright. The job was a means to an end, only that, and the end had been achieved. There would be other houses, other opportunities, and they would find other ways of making sure that they were safe. Their circumstances had to be straightened out first.
He waited to cross Chancery Lane so that a horse-drawn cart could clatter by. The icy wind pierced his cheap clothes, making him shiver. A shoal of cars followed the cart. He crossed the road, traced an indirect route through Holborn to the Aldwych, continued south to the Strand and then crossed the river by Waterloo Bridge. As he walked his confusion gradually resolved, like clouds drifting away from the face of the sun, and a certainty developed. An inevitability. He knew what he had to do.
He kept going south, stopping in Lambeth to buy another packet of smokes, and then he turned back. He had covered plenty of distance but he was young and fit and the miles rolled away beneath his feet. He changed direction and took a different route back to the north, venturing into a poorer quarter of the district where the cobbles slopped with stagnant puddles, the smell of ordure was strong and any brightness was extinguished at fifty yards’ distance. The handful of working lamps, haloed with mist, hung like isolated stars, illuminating nothing save themselves. He passed beneath echoing railway arches and climbed the steps to Hungerford Bridge. He paused in the middle, looking out towards the dome of St. Paul’s and the city beyond. The river washed beneath him, eddies and vortexes, a current they said was strong enough to drown the most powerful swimmer. The detritus of East London was being carried out to sea. Harry descended the steps of the bridge to the Embankment and the gardens behind it. The wind had picked up and, before long, it was strong enough to pluck the leaves from the trees and make the branches rattle. Even now, despite the imminent arrival of winter, a few poor bedraggled tramps were settling down on the benches, tucking themselves up in parcels of newspaper.
Harry looked at his watch. Five before six. He looked along the line of benches and found the one he wanted. The man he was there to meet was already there, five minutes early. That was good. Harry walked across to the bench and sat down.
“Evening, sir.”
“Good evening, soldier.”
His name was Burroughs and he was a Major in the stores division. He was the epitome of what Harry had come to expect from a commissioned officer: mildly aristocratic, a thin pencil moustache that was fashioned into points with wax, a thoroughly pitiful desire to ingratiate himself with the soldiers. Harry had met him on the boat coming back from the fighting and they had got on well enough for the Major to offer him his address and tell him about the particular service he was planning to offer when they got back to Civvie St
reet.
“How have you been, Harry?”
“Much the same as most of the men, I suppose. It’s not easy, is it, coming back and trying to get stuck into things again? Seems like things have moved on and we’ve been left out of it.”
“It’s not easy at all.”
“You go away for three, four years, and you expect things to be good for you when you get back. It doesn’t seem too much to ask.”
“And it isn’t?”
“No, sir. It’s certainly not easy.”
Burroughs took a packet of smokes from his pocket and offered one to Harry. He took one for himself and lighted both.
“Your telegram was a surprise, old boy.”
“Could you get it?”
“I could. Do you have it?
“The money? Oh, yes––I do.”
Harry reached into his inside pocket and took out the fifty pounds that they had agreed to give to Scarpello. Surreptitiously, so as not to be seen, he folded the wad once and palmed it to Burroughs. The Major reached into the leather knapsack on the bench beside him and took out a cloth-wrapped package. After ensuring that they were unobserved, he unfolded one corner of the bundle and opened it: inside was a revolver.
“It’s the Webley Mark VI,” he said. “Did you use it?”
“I was more of an Enfield man.”
“You won’t have a problem with it. Lovely weapon. Double action, top-break with automatic extraction, .455 calibre. It’s good up to fifty yards. Very powerful.”
“Was it easy to get?”
Burroughs chuckled. “The stores are a dreadful mess––hundred of guns just slopping around. You can take what you want, within reason. I’ve put a dozen cartridges in there for you, too.” He got up, leaving the bundle on the bench. He fastened his overcoat. “I’m not going to ask what you need it for,” he said, the tip of his cigarette flaring in the gloom as he drew down on it, “but if you need anything else, more ammunition, something a little bigger, whatever you need, you know where to find me.”
Harry watched as he made his way down to the entrance to the underground. He picked up the package and set off.
11
HE WALKED ON. As he passed through Charing Cross station he paused for a moment to watch the hordes of bowler hatted commuters shuffling impatiently for their trains to be announced. Steam gathered under the canopy as the great engines were readied for departure. He looked out at the men, the sea of bored faces, the identical clothing, a thousand lives cleaving to the same depressing, monotonous routine. There was something dreadful about it, he thought; the coldness, the anonymity, the aloofness. A thousand men, jostled to and fro and yet avoiding contact, deliberately unconscious of one another, refusing to acknowledge anyone else beyond their own narrow existence.
He stopped in Trafalgar Square. A man was selling chestnuts warmed in a coke-fuelled brazier. A wave of hot, scented air washed out and almost overcame him. He thought about stopping. He was hungry. He thought about buying a packet and sitting down on a bench and eating them. But then he thought of the cold room in the awful lodging house, his brother, the difficult position that they had stumbled into, the bleakness of their prospects if they acceded to Scarpello’s demands and the bleakness of their prospects if they did not. No use, he concluded again. Shove on. Keep moving. There was nothing else for it. He knew what he had to do.
Neon lights shone down at him as he passed into the throng of Piccadilly Circus. They called it the Great White Way these days. It hadn’t been like that when he went away. Signs throbbing with electricity. What a waste it all was, when people were freezing in their rooms, unable to pay for heat. The pavements around the statue of Eros were densely crowded. The crowd slid past him; he avoided them and was avoided.
He reached The Griffin at six. Rather than go in through the front entrance, he followed the road around the side and turned into the alleyway that led to the rear of the building. It was lined with overflowing dustbins, rotting food lending the atmosphere a heady, dizzying intensity. A dead cat was quietly decomposing against a wall, a cloud of avid flies clustered over its deliquescing flesh.
Bella was waiting for him in the doorway, framed by the light from inside.
“Hello,” he said.
She smiled at him shyly. “Hello.”
He reached a hand around her waist, drew her to him and kissed her tenderly on the cheek. She folded willingly into his embrace and he held her there for a moment, feeling the contours of her firm body moulded into his, the smell of her perfume struggling with the odour of the ale that had seeped into the fabric of her dress. At last, he gently separated himself from her and took a step backwards.
“You remember what I want you to do?”
“Yes,” she said.
He took the package and gave it to her. “I’ll be back at eight. I’ll see you then.”
“Yes,” she said. And then, “Come here.”
Harry stepped into her again and put his arms around her waist. She pressed her lips against his.
“Be careful.”
12
HARRY RETURNED to The Griffin at eight. The Public Bar was thronged and he was jostled and bumped as he made his way inside, turning to the right and the entrance to the Private Bar. The door, with its smoked glass panel, was closed. There was another man ahead of him and, as he watched, he was frisked with practiced ease by one of the men who guarded the door. It was opened and, as the man passed inside, Harry could see the same men in the bar that had been there the night he and Trimmer had their confrontation. He saw a flash of colour as he was pushed suddenly to his right, the splash vanishing behind the door as it was closed again. It was enough: Scarpello’s extravagant taste marked him out in a crowd.
He made his way to the door.
“Yes?” the guard asked him with gruff disinterest.
“I’m here to see Mr. Scarpello. I have an appointment.”
“That right? Who are you?”
“Harry Costello.”
The second guard looked at mention of his name. “I remember you,” he said. He turned to his mate. “He’s the one who set about Trimmer.”
The first man regarded him with a hostility that included, perhaps, just a little new found respect. “You didn’t want to do that,” he said. “The things he said he’s going to do to you.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“I’ll say you will. You know he’s in tonight, do you?”
Harry shrugged.
The man smirked at him. “Wait here.”
He went inside, leaving Harry at the door.
He took a deep breath, working hard to contain his nerves.
The door opened again. “The boss will see you,” the man said. “Stick your arms out.”
Harry did as he was told and the man frisked him quickly and efficiently.
The guard leant in close enough for him to smell the alcohol and tobacco on his breath. “You do anything silly tonight and we’ll cut you into strips. You understand me, boy?”
“I do,” Harry said.
The man stepped aside and Harry went into the Private Bar. Scarpello was looking at him, a sly smile on his face. Benneworth was standing with a group of men behind him, next to the dart board. They were engaged in rowdy conversation but it was choked away as they saw him. Benneworth’s fists clenched and there was hatred in his eyes. Harry felt a wateriness in his knees as he stepped forwards; the door swinging shut behind him did so with a significance that was not lost on him.
He was not among friends here.
“Mr. Scarpello,” Harry said with careful deference.
“Hello, Harry.” He indicated the chair next to him. “Sit.”
He did as he was told.
“Do you have my money?”
“I do.”
“I’m glad you saw sense. Too many young men these days, especially those who have been away, they have a tendency to be rather hot-headed. That would have made things very difficult.”
; “I’m not a fool,” Harry said. “I’m only sorry that we got off on the wrong foot.”
“That’s nothing to worry about now. That’s all been fixed.”
“Yes, but, nonetheless, I’d still like to apologise properly. Before we––you know, conclude our business––I’d like to buy you a drink. What will you have?”
“That’s an excellent idea. I’ll take a whisky.”
Harry felt empty legged as he got up. He felt sick. Scarpello reclined in his seat as he made his way across the Saloon to the bar. Benneworth watched him all the way. A wave of weakness swept over him and he had to prop himself against the counter. Bella was standing between the Saloon Bar and the Private Bar and, as she noticed him, she nodded to one of the beer pumps. Harry changed course towards it and saw the cloth wrapped package resting there, just below the level of the countertop.
He reached down for it, took it and replaced it with the front door key to the lodging house.
He looked at Bella again. She was deathly pale. He indicated the key with a slight downward nod of his head and she nodded her understanding, collected it, then disappeared into the stock room.
The bundle, wrapped in quarters, opened easily and there was the gun, the dark metal shining dully in the gaslight. He had loaded it before giving it to Bella, six big .455 cartridges in the cylinder. He slipped the fingers of his right hand around the butt, his index finger slipping down across the depressed grooves of the cylinder, his knuckle bumping against the trigger guard, his finger finally curling around the trigger. The oily cloth dropped away, falling to the beer-soaked floor behind the bar. He had a moment of vertiginousness, the clear certainty that he was standing on a precipice. He had two choices and the difference between them was stark: he could leave the gun where it was, make an apology to Scarpello and pay him the money. Or he could go through with what he had planned. One was safe but lacked ambition; it would set the reputation of the Costellos as compliant boys who would do what they were told. The scope of their potential, and all of Harry’s dreams, would be circumscribed at a stroke. The other choice had consequences of its own but, as he walked towards Scarpello and brought the gun up, and he became aware of the terrible power that he held in his hand, he knew with absolute conviction that those consequences were preferable.