The Right Sort of Man

by Allison Montclair

  Elsie was with Fanny and another girl, fending off the more aggressive males while staking claim to the table. She beckoned Iris and Gwen over.

  “This is Becky,” she said. “Another friend of Tillie’s. Becky, the short one’s Mary and the tall one’s Sophie. We met ’em yesterday at Grimble’s.”

  “Niceter meetcha,” said Becky.

  “Likewise,” said Iris. “Did you go to the funeral? ’Ow was it?”

  “Me and Elsie went,” said Fanny. “Decent turnout. No one got pissed first, so proper decorum was observed for a change.”

  “I ’ad to tend to me mum,” said Becky. “She’s been off ’er feed. But Dad got ’ome in time, so I came ’ere for the festivities.”

  Elsie suddenly looked up at Gwen and grinned mischievously. Gwen wondered at it, then started as someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  She turned to see the ocean in a man’s eyes.

  “You came,” said Des, smiling. “I din’t think you would.”

  “You invited me,” said Gwen, smiling back.

  “Not every invitation gets accepted in life,” said Des. “Since we’re celebrating Tillie, and because you’ll be needing to toast her in a few, may I buy you a drink?”

  “Please,” said Gwen.

  And before she knew it, his hand was on the small of her back, guiding her away from the other women and towards the bar.

  It was like an electric jolt to her spine, feeling the touch of an unfamiliar man’s hand. Since Ronnie’s death and her time in the sanitorium, the only physical closeness she had known was with the men who had danced with her at weddings, and they had either been relations or members of Ronnie’s unit, which meant that they had held her at a respectful distance while looking at her with barely suppressed pity. But this man whom she had only met yesterday guided her with an easy authority that she found herself welcoming even as her conscience whispered caution.

  “What are you ’aving?” he asked. “I’m guessing you’re not a pint of pigs type.”

  “Oh, you’d be surprised,” she said. “But if they can come up with a fizzy lemonade with gin, that would do me nicely.”

  “Oy, Kit!” he called to one of the bartenders. “Pint of Burton and a fizzy lemonade with gin for the lady.”

  “Righto,” said the bartender.

  He placed the drinks in front of them. As he did, a burly man in his fifties started pounding on the bar for attention. The room gradually quieted down.

  “My name is Tom La Salle,” he bellowed. “We are gathered ’ere on account of my niece, Tillie, who we sent to be with the Lord this afternoon. That bloke there is Fred, who is the only man not drinking tonight.”

  He pointed to a serious young man seated by the bar, holding a derby upside down.

  “’E’s collecting for the family,” said Tom. “In addition, part of the proceeds from the bar is going in the ’at, so drink up, lads and lasses. If Tillie were ’ere, she’d be leading the pack of you, singing the loudest and dancing the ’ardest. Raise your glass to ’er, and let the party commence.”

  Glasses and mugs shot up in tribute.

  “And the next time I toast my Tillie is the day that little bastard swings for it,” shouted Tom, and there was a roar of approval from the room. “To Tillie La Salle, may she be dancing in ’Eaven!”

  “To Tillie!” people shouted.

  Des clinked his mug against Gwen’s glass, and they drank. He drained his beer in one go. Gwen had a sip, letting the tartness of the lemonade roll around her tongue.

  “Another, Kit!” shouted Des, and another pint appeared in front of him.

  “Ever been ’ere before?” he asked.

  “Never,” said Gwen. “This isn’t still Shadwell, is it?”

  “Nah, it’s Wapping ’ere, but we been coming to Merle’s forever. There’s a verandah out back with a nice view. Care to take a butcher’s?”

  “All right.”

  Once again, she was brought expertly through the crowd. She caught a glimpse of Iris watching her with one eyebrow raised. Then she lost sight of her as they crossed through the back room and out a doorway.

  Iris raised her pint in the direction of her vanishing friend.

  “Des is a fast worker,” she commented.

  “Fair smitten, that one is,” said Fanny.

  “What’s ’e do, then?” asked Iris.

  “Carpenter down at the docks,” said Elsie. “Good catch for a girl, if you ask me. Your friend could do a lot worse.”

  “She going to be all right out there with ’im?”

  “Aw, ’e’s a proper gentleman,” said Elsie.

  “More’s the pity,” sighed Fanny.

  “That’s all right then,” said Iris. “So this is Merle’s. This is the place what Tillie told me about.”

  “That right?” asked Elsie. “What’d she tell you?”

  “I don’t know that I should say, ’er being gone and all.”

  “Now, there ain’t nothing you could tell us about Tillie that would surprise us,” said Elsie.

  “Not a thing,” said Becky.

  “Well, we were talking about stockings,” said Iris.

  “Oh, is that all?” laughed Elsie. “Not like it was anything shocking then.”

  “‘In olden days a glimpse of stocking…’” Becky sang.

  “Now, don’t you start,” said Elsie. “She starts singing now, she’ll be up on the bar screeching ’er ’ead off by the end of the night.”

  “You ’ave no appreciation for me talents,” sniffed Becky.

  “I would if you ’ad any,” retorted Elsie. “So, what about Tillie and stockings?”

  “Oh, just that she said she could put me on to a bloke ’ere what sells ’em on the QT,” said Iris. “I was looking for some. I ’aven’t got a decent pair left.”

  “‘Fond of fun as fun can be,’” Becky sang. “‘When it’s on the strict QT!’”

  “There she goes again,” sighed Fanny. “You might as well get up on the bar now, love, and save us the suspense of wondering when.”

  “So, you know the bloke she was talking about?” asked Iris, trying desperately to keep the conversation on track and with no further song cues.

  “Yeah, I know ’im,” said Elsie. “Name’s Archie.”

  “That’s the one,” said Iris. “I couldn’t remember the name. Is ’e around and about?”

  “Archie usually don’t come in ’ere this early,” said Elsie. “I’m surprised Tillie mentioned ’im. I thought they was on the outs.”

  “Another boyfriend?”

  “Oh, no,” said Elsie. “No, more of—well, I don’t like to say.”

  “Ow, come on,” urged Iris.

  “No, it’s ’er party,” said Elsie. “We shouldn’t be disrespectful of the departed so fresh in the ground.”

  “No disrespect intended,” said Iris. “But it sounds like there’s a tale to be told there.”

  “I’m not the one to be telling it,” said Elsie. “Look, if you’re after stockings, give me your number and I’ll give you a call. I can set you up with Archie.”

  “Don’t ’ave a phone at ’ome,” said Iris. “You give me your number, and I’ll call you from the box on the corner.”

  “Give ’er mine, too,” said Fanny.

  Iris slid a paper and pencil over, and Elsie wrote down the numbers.

  * * *

  “What do you think?” asked Des.

  The verandah projected out eight feet from the rear of the pub, hovering over the top of the wall holding back the Thames. Below her was the exposed muddy bank, strewn with stones and scraps of lumber. A small group of boys was playing by the riverside, throwing sticks into the current and chasing them down to the dock to the left.

  Gwen stepped forward gingerly.

  “You can come all the way out,” said Des, walking out to the rail. He thumped it confidently. “It’s solid. I should know—I built it.”

  “Well, in that case,” said Gwen.

 
She walked forward to the rail and leaned against it, gazing down the river. On both sides, cranes spiked into the air, idle for the moment. The remains of burnt and bombed wharves protruded from the water like the hands of drowning men. Some, more encouragingly, were being rebuilt. A few late tugboats chugged by, heading back to their home docks. The sun was off to the right, getting lower.

  “Where do you work?” asked Gwen.

  “Off that way,” he said, pointing to the left. “Got a new shop on Benson Quay. We opened up again a month ago.”

  “Congratulations. Where was the old shop?”

  “Near there. Took out by a heavy bomb in ’40.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, could’ve been worse. They came at night, so most of us was down shelter. ’Ad a mate, Andy, wasn’t so lucky. ’E was a fire watcher. Building ’e was on collapsed with ’im on it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again, then she shook her head.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “All of our stories nowadays end up with someone saying, ‘I’m sorry,’” she said. “It wears you down.”

  “It does, dunnit?” he agreed. “What kind of story would you like to ’ear?”

  “Tell me about Tillie.”

  “Ah, that one,” he laughed. “She was a tough one, she was. Give you an example, we useter bunker down at the Tilbury Shelter when things were ’ot and ’eavy during the Blitz. You know that one?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it’s this massive warehouse up between Cable and Commercial, where Whitechapel comes up against Aldgate. The basement is enormous, and ’as these big arches ’olding up the girders, so as bombproof as bombproof could be. It wasn’t an official shelter, but we would cram ten thousand in there every night.”

  “Ten thousand! Goodness, that’s a city in itself.”

  “It was that,” he said. “People even brought ’orses down, which didn’t make the air any better. So, they put up all these wooden platforms to keep you off the damp, and there was no official types running anything, so we ran it ourselves, unofficial-like.”

  “How did that work out?”

  “Better than you’d expect, given ’uman nature,” he said. “Rule was, long as you got in and laid out your blanket somewhere, that spot was yours. We used to send the kids on first, loaded up with blankets, so we could grab a decent location, not too near the entrance, not too near the lavs, and as far away from the ’orses as possible.

  “So, one night, we’re coming in after work, and Essie, that’s me little sis, comes running up in tears, saying that some toughs had taken over our place. Now, there’s just a few of us adults there at the moment, and I’m the only Johnny on the spot. I got me toolbox with me, so I take out me biggest ’ammer in case I need to, you know, persuade anyone.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “But before I can even get started, Tillie barges forward, all five foot nothing of ’er. She’s not even seventeen then, I think. She goes up to the biggest tough there screaming bloody murder and says if ’e and ’is lads don’t vacate right away, she’s going to cut off ’is—”

  He stopped before he completed the sentence.

  “There is a lady present,” he said, grinning. “I can’t tell you the whole story. But you get the gist.”

  “I do,” said Gwen. “Was the threat effective?”

  “It was,” he said. “We told ’er after that the RAF were calling the Spitfires by the wrong name. They should’ve been calling them Tillies.”

  “I wish I knew her better,” said Gwen.

  “She was a pistol and an ’alf, all right,” said Des.

  “I wonder why she wanted to get out of Shadwell,” said Gwen.

  “What makes you think she did?” asked Des, looking at her curiously.

  “Well, she went to that marriage bureau, didn’t she? Sounds like she wanted a fresh start somewhere.”

  “Yeah, a lot of good that did ’er,” said Des gloomily. “Tillie bombed some bridges ’erself, from what I ’eard.”

  “How?”

  “Well, you know about Roger?”

  “The girls told us about him. Ex boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, she was ’ead over ’eels,” he said. “Roger shows up after demob, tall, dark, and ’andsome, and before you know it, she’s talking about turning over a new leaf and settling down. Then ’e up and quits ’er.”

  “Why?”

  “She said ’e was using ’er because ’e knew she was in with this spiv named Archie. She introduces ’im, they start palling around, and before you know it, Roger’s wearing a chalk-striped suit and running errands after dark.”

  “And Tillie? Was she working for Archie?”

  “She was, but I ’eard she wanted out,” said Des. “Maybe she thought if she could find a nice bloke from somewhere else, maybe she could marry ’im and put it all be’ind. And look where it got ’er.”

  He shook his head.

  “This is not the conversation I wanted to be ’aving,” he said. “I take a girl out ’ere for the view, and I sail us right into the doldrums.”

  “I like the view,” said Gwen.

  “It’s the best view on the river,” he said. “If you ’appen to fancy cranes, that is.”

  “I’ve decided that I like cranes, now that I’ve seen them up close,” she said.

  Good Lord, Gwendolyn! she thought. Laying it on rather thick, aren’t we?

  But he was smiling at that.

  “What’s your story, then?” he said. “I can’t figure ’ow a looker like you ’asn’t been snatched up by now.”

  “Someone did,” she said.

  “Ah, that’s what it is,” he said. “You lost someone.”

  “Yes,” said Gwen.

  “I imagine ’e was a good one to ’ave won you over,” said Des. “What was ’is name?”

  “Ronnie. We were married five years. Almost five.”

  “Well, ’ere’s to Ronnie,” he said, holding up his pint. “’Ere’s to Ronnie, and Andy, and Tillie, and all the ones we lost.”

  “To the ones we lost,” said Gwen, tapping her glass against his.

  “And to the new ones we find,” he added, smiling at her.

  She drank to cover her confusion, her feeling of betraying Ronnie. This is nothing, she told herself. This is harmless. Nothing will come of it. Nothing could. I barely know him.

  But would you like to know him better? asked a voice from somewhere inside her that she hadn’t heard from in a long time.

  She turned back to look down the river.

  “You can’t see the Tower Bridge from here,” she observed.

  “That’s around the bend,” said Des. “It’s a nice walk down the street, if you fancy one.”

  “Not tonight, thanks,” said Gwen.

  “Maybe sometime else, then?”

  Only a walk along the river, said the voice. Safe as houses.

  “All right,” she said.

  Safe as houses in a Blitz.

  “I’ll need your number,” he said.

  “We don’t have a working telephone right now,” she said. “Give me yours. I’ll call.”

  “I’ve ’eard that line before, you know,” he said. “It generally leads to disappointment.”

  “I promise that I’ll call,” she said.

  But I will end up disappointing you anyway, she thought, as he wrote his number down.

  * * *

  “Well, speak of the Devil,” said Elsie. “There’s Archie coming in now with an ’ole passel of wide boys. We’ll be drinking deep tonight, girls!”

  Iris turned to see a powerfully built man push through the door. He was six feet, wearing a double-breasted American-style lounge suit, with a dark purple shirt and an extra-wide kipper tie, the knot bulging loose and large below his throat, a diamond stickpin impaling it halfway down. He walked as though he expected the crowd to give way before him, and they did. He went up to Tillie’s uncle Tom and shook his hand firmly, then made a br
ief circling motion with his forefinger to the bartender, who refilled Tom’s drink in an instant.

  Archie pulled a roll of banknotes from his pocket and tossed a tenner into the hat, then strode past Elsie’s table into the back room along with his men, who were similarly dressed but careful not to match their boss in flamboyance or opulence. Seconds later, a group of men hurriedly exited the rear room, clutching drinks in their hands, hastily throwing on their jackets. The evicted customers from Archie’s regular table, guessed Iris.

  “No Roger,” said Fanny. “Not surprised.”

  “So, you want to be introduced?” asked Elsie.

  “’E doesn’t ’ave the stockings with him, does ’e?” asked Iris.

  “No, don’t be silly,” laughed Elsie. “But if I introduce you, you can work out a time and place.”

  “All right,” said Iris.

  “Guard our seats with your lives,” Elsie instructed the others. “And no singing, you!”

  “Spoilsport,” muttered Becky.

  Elsie led Iris through the crowd to the back room, where Archie sat at a corner table commanding the view of the room. He was regaling his boys with a story while a beleaguered barmaid attempted to take their orders. He looked up and beamed as Elsie approached.

  “There’s my best girl,” he said. “Give us a wet one, gorgeous!”

  Elsie leaned down and planted her lips on his as his companions cheered.

  “And what have you brought us?” he asked, glancing past her at Iris. “A lovely thing in a small package, I’ll warrant.”

  “This is Mary,” said Elsie. “Friend of Tillie’s from days gone by, come to pay ’er respects.”

  “’Allo,” said Iris.

  Archie looked her down, then back up. Iris met his eye boldly, a slight smile on her lips.

  “You’re a shy one, then,” said Archie. “Knew Tillie from where?”

  “Here and there, different places,” said Iris. “Places where a girl could get a laugh and a drink for the price of a smile.”

  “Sounds like Tillie, all right,” said Archie. “Never ’eard ’er mention you, though.”

  “You must ’ave a few friends she didn’t know about,” returned Iris. “She told me about you, though.”

  “Yeah? Nothing good, I expect,” said Archie.