by Jim Kelly
They had taken refuge at Rose’s stall, much as Brooke had done one evening in 1919. Back in Cambridge after his convalescence in the sanatorium it had become quickly apparent that Brooke’s academic studies were over. His eyes could not take the strain of the books, or the laboratory observations that would have underpinned a career at the university. He’d turned to the Borough, and his first beat had brought him through Market Hill three times a night. Rose had been one of the first nighthawks. Widowed by the Western Front, she’d been left with three daughters, who all now helped run the business: the night shift had always been hers alone.
Having satisfied the soldiers’ appetites Rose came round with Brooke’s roll and a mug of tea and, ominously, her own large teacup. Rose was a devotee of the occult, of lore and legend and superstition, which Brooke tolerated with as much grace as he could muster. Rose had always treated him like a son, a complement to her daughters, and he tolerated her foibles with a filial affection.
‘That’s good luck,’ she said, looking towards the Guildhall, where a sickle moon was falling towards the rooftops.
‘In what specific sense?’ asked Brooke, sceptical to the last.
‘My mother always said that it was a bad omen to see the new moon for the first time through glass. We had to call her out into the street if we saw it – so she wouldn’t just see a glimpse by mistake.’
Brooke watched the moon, trying hard to believe in good luck.
‘Something’s up, isn’t it?’ she asked.
‘How could you tell?’ asked Brooke.
‘You look haunted,’ she said.
At first he fobbed her off with a résumé of the last few hours: the discovery of Peggy Wylde, the silent procession carrying her body back through the moonlit fields. Then he told her the truth, about the visit from Burr, the American, bringing such dreadful news. He emphasised the degree to which there was still hope, and that the Red Cross would try to get answers from the camp commandant.
‘I am sorry, Eden,’ said Rose, putting a hand on his. ‘Where’s Luke? She’ll want to speak to her brother.’
‘You’re right, but there’s no chance. He’s being trained up in Scotland. It’s all hush-hush. We’re just hoping on a last letter before he actually goes, anything really.’
Rose swilled her tea out into the gutter. ‘That’s a shame. My lot are as thick as thieves. They scrap like dogs over a bone, but take sides and they close ranks pretty quick, believe me. You can’t get a cigarette paper between them. Luke would have been a comfort for his sister.’
It struck Brooke then that Rose had three daughters just like Alice Pollard. He wondered if Elsie and Connie had been close to Peggy, and how they’d react to the dreadful news of her death. For the first time it occurred to him that they might be harbouring a family secret.
The soldiers were laughing and joking, a hipflask being handed round to fortify the tea.
Rose examined the tea leaves left in her cup, delivering her opinion on the messages hidden within: justice, apparently, was going to appear with a halo of fire and wipe away an evil, while good fortune would follow a late-night knock on the door.
Brooke thought it was another instalment of the usual mumbo jumbo.
He ditched his cigarette and was about to set off home when he heard tyres screech as a van sped into Market Place. It came to a halt in front of a corner shop and the driver ran to the back, threw open the doors and heaved a pile of newspapers, bound in string, onto the step of a newsagent’s called Hawkings’.
Which made him think about The Times and Bruno Zeri’s abrupt departure from the staff room at the Marshall canteen. What had he read? Would the answer reveal why Peggy was killed? He realised suddenly that he didn’t have to wait to find out the answer. A copy of the paper in question was actually close to hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The offices of the Cambridge News stood opposite the Spinning House. At this hour the facade betrayed no lights, and the ‘front office’ – open to the public – was locked. A side alley led under an archway and down a short incline to a rear yard. A lorry, loaded with a vast roll of newsprint, stood silently in the shadows. The rear of the building was dominated by the folding wooden doors marked GOODS IN. A cat was drinking milk from a saucer on a step, the door itself open.
The building inside was concrete, and cavernous, and contained the presses – a brooding mass of oiled steel and brass. Brooke felt the same thrill he always experienced in the theatre, the heady expectation that something was about to happen, and had happened in the past; that the presses would run, and the news would spill out on inky paper, to be rushed out to news sellers on street corners, standing beside bills which proclaimed: WAR DECLARED, or KING ABDICATES, or GERMANY SURRENDERS, or CUP FINAL HAT-TRICK.
He heard heavy, faltering steps, and an elderly man appeared in a grubby vest. He said he was the night watchman, and when Brooke explained that he was from the Borough, he wanted to know how he could help the police at that ungodly hour.
‘Editor’s not in ’til ten. The newsroom’s early man is Cotter and he’s supposed to be here at eight: supposed to be. But I know the truth, and he’s hardly ever here by nine, and that’s hours yet.’
Somewhere a phone rang.
‘I wanted to see some old copies of The Times. Not that old. Three days ago. Do they keep ’em?’
‘You need the morgue,’ he said. ‘They put all the obits in there – for the people who haven’t died yet. Gives me the creeps. But they file the papers too. And cuttings. Follow me.’
Brooke followed the man’s shoddy slippers up an iron staircase and through a heavy glass door. There was a very different atmosphere beyond, as a carpeted corridor led them past offices, then up a stairwell and through an iron fire door. And then everything changed again. The newsroom took up the whole floor, with windows on three sides. There were perhaps twenty desks, and two very long tables, and it was difficult to see anything clearly because of all the telephone wires hanging down, the pneumatic tubes for copy which ran horizontally above the desks, the metal spikes on every desk top, bristling with skewered paper, and the dangling telephone wires.
The ‘morgue’ was in a corner, behind a glass partition.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said the old man. ‘The obits are there,’ he said, indicating a large filing cabinet. ‘You’ll want that lot,’ he added, cocking a thumb at a desk, more cabinets, and an angled readers’ desk on which the newspapers were attached to metal binders.
The desk was covered in eviscerated copies of the News. Brooke thought it must be someone’s job to cut out all the stories and file them away, under various headings, like CHURCH, or FIRE, or CRIME, or COUNCIL, or RIVER.
The angled desk held copies of the Cambridge News, The Times, The Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, The People and the Daily Mail.
He extracted the right copy of The Times by unclipping the binder and took it out into the newsroom, realising belatedly that he was exhausted, and that he needed to sit down. The long desk, at the head of the room, had a big comfortable leather chair which swivelled, so he settled down there and spread the paper out.
The news for the day in question seemed unremarkable. Sporadic fighting had broken out in Somaliland as the Italian invasion continued, the evacuation of civilians from Gibraltar was continuing, and bad weather in the Channel had led to speculation that any invasion plans might be scuppered, while Brighton beach had been closed to allow the laying of barbed wire.
Brooke read everything twice, fighting off the urge to close his eyes.
After twenty minutes he’d almost given up.
Then he found a small item on page 12.
TWO HUNDRED DEAD WASHED UP ALONG IRISH COAST
Shipping Staff
Victims of the U-boat attack on the SS Arandora Star on 2nd July, which was carrying more than 1,000 German and Italian internees to Canada, are continuing to come ashore on beaches in Ireland.
The official total so far is 25
6, as confirmed by a Gardai spokesman in Malin, Co. Donegal. Bibles, letters, papers and military identity tags have been used to identify the dead. Burials are taking place locally.
It is understood the final death toll of the disaster will be in excess of 850 and will include more than 200 British soldiers acting as guards on board for the transatlantic passage to camps in northern Canada.
HMCS St Laurent, first at the scene, was able to pick up more than 800 survivors. The wounded are still being treated at various hospitals in Liverpool and Glasgow.
Of the surviving casualties only one is still unidentified. An Italian male, in his late sixties to early seventies, has remained in a coma since being admitted to hospital, and is in a critical condition.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Health said that it is hoped relatives will come forward to identify the man. The patient was wearing a distinctive gold chain, carrying a silver disc, upon which was etched an enamel green tree, against a red sky, with white jagged mountains. A crown is set above the tree.
Descriptions of the silver disc are to be circulated amongst the Italian communities in the hope of finding the survivor’s identity.
Brooke had seen this precise motif before, set in a framed map of the Apennines of Italy, hung on the wall of the Roma. Bruno Zeri’s father had been interned. Had he been selected for transfer by ship to the new camps being set up in Canada? Was he fighting for his life now, alone in some hospital bed? There was little doubt his son thought so, because he’d walked out of Marshall that day, and Brooke knew now what had prompted his departure. What he didn’t know was if Zeri’s sudden flight had somehow led to his girlfriend’s watery grave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
It promised to be a fine day at Waren: the forest dew was gone from the grassy runway, and there had been ham for breakfast, and even fresh eggs. A football match was about to begin, the pilots divided by drawn lots, although they were mindful of Oberst Fritsch’s warning that they must not risk injury, even if such strictures were fast losing credibility, given it was now four days since their first, unsuccessful raid on Cambridge. Each night they prepared to fly again, but the meteorological gods were against them. The attractions of the country air had palled and the mood swung daily between morose boredom and sudden bouts of schoolboy hysteria. The night before in the mess an ugly brawl had broken out over a game of cards.
The football, once it began, was desultory. Several players were sick, testimony to the rank nature of the barrel of beer provided in the mess, which had fuelled the quarrel over poker matchsticks. Bartel alone played with a manic intensity despite his hangover in an attempt to block out thoughts of his family: there was still no news from Berlin, but renewed rumours of casualties and bomb damage. For a few moments the game degenerated into a scrum, the ball lost amidst flailing bodies.
Bartel emerged, bent double with a stitch. Straightening up, he saw that everyone else was rooted to the spot.
A civilian car – an Adler – had passed through the gates and was crawling slowly along the apron of the airfield towards them. Bartel would have recognised it anywhere – although the model was common – because he’d fitted the roof rack the previous summer so that they could take a tent to the Baltic coast, and the colour was striking – a milky pastel blue – which Bridget, his wife, had coveted from a distance when they’d picked it out on the garage forecourt at Tegel.
The car stopped fifty yards away and then nothing happened. The sun’s reflection had turned the windscreen into a blazing shield and it was difficult to see the driver. The ball stood untouched in the centre circle.
Bartel felt dead inside, and at some level his brain had decided that it would be best if the world came to a stop right now, right here, with the football players set in stone.
One of the back doors opened and Bridget got out. He knew it was bad news then, but not how bad. The other back door opened and Helga appeared, clutching a book, and even at that distance he could see her face, and how uncertain she was, and how lost.
Bridget was in her best coat, and he could tell she’d just brushed her hair in the car before stepping out.
The driver got out, leaning on the door, and he recognised his brother-in-law, Johann, who lived close by in the southern suburbs, and who had been his sister’s idol since childhood.
Bartel walked towards Bridget and when he was six feet away he stopped and saw that she had a wound on her face which she’d tried to disguise with powder. Her hands were tightly clasped but he could see the knuckles were red and bruised. She took three unsteady steps towards him.
He asked the question to which he already knew the answer. ‘What’s happened to Ellen?’
‘It was a bomb,’ she said. ‘We were running to the shelter, she was in my arms, but I am here and she is not.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Brooke had slept for an hour in the news editor’s chair before going home for breakfast. He found Joy in her uniform, already up, getting Iris ready for a day with Mrs Mullins. Bright, even breezy, she was unrelentingly positive. The night before she’d written letters to the Red Cross and the US Embassy, and they stood ready for posting in the toast rack, with stamps affixed.
‘Mum said I had to do something, not just sit and stew. I’ve got a telephone number for the family of one of the others captured with Ben, so I’ll ring tonight and see if they’ve heard anything. There must be news; I just have to find it.’
Brooke suggested trying to ring Luke as well. The commandos were based at Achnacarry House, near Fort William, and he might be able to get a message through and plead for a call, explaining about Ben.
Joy gave him a hug. ‘Thanks, Dad. That would be wonderful – you know, just to hear his voice. I couldn’t bear to lose anyone else.’
Claire was asleep, and Brooke briefly contemplated taking one of the Veronal sleeping pills. He felt desperately tired still, but the fact that he’d kept one of the tablets in his pocket, for emergencies, made him feel unclean, as if he was already addicted. So instead he ate a slice of toast, drank a cup of tea steeped in tannin, changed into a fresh set of clothes and set out for the Spinning House, hoping the exhilaration of the hunt would keep him on his feet. He knew now that if he could find Leon Zeri, the possible survivor of the Arandora Star, he could find his runaway son.
At his desk, Brooke flicked through the Whitehall directory. A man in ‘liaison’ at the Ministry of Health was Delphic, insisting that all enquiries were now being handled directly by the Home Office. It was clear that the sinking of the Arandora Star, and the deaths of hundreds of Italian, German and Austrian internees, was a scandal. Nobody wanted to talk, let alone help. Brooke was passed from bureaucrat to pen-pusher until someone in the legal office informed him the issue was now sub judice pending an official enquiry led by Lord Snell, the leader of the Labour Party in the House of Lords – Brooke was certain this information was being read to him from a prepared statement – which meant that they couldn’t help.
Brooke said he didn’t care about who was to blame. He was just trying to find the survivor described in The Times. He was fobbed off again: all enquiries related to relatives of the dead and survivors were being coordinated by Scotland Yard. Brooke should ring Whitehall 1212.
Which is when, finally, he struck lucky. The inspector in charge of foreign aliens was Ronald ‘Timber’ Woods, who’d briefly been in the bed next to Brooke’s at the sanatorium in Scarborough, having been shot through the neck standing on the edge of a trench across the Ypres Salient, trying to urge his men to clamber out into a hail of machine-gun fire.
‘I can’t believe it’s you, Eden,’ he said. The voice was certainly unsteady, rasping and punctuated by a frequent fluid glottal stop. The wound had clearly left an enduring mark.
Brooke explained that he thought he knew the identity of the survivor in a coma who had featured in the newspaper article. Where was the hospital? Both the Ministry of Health and the Home Office had been evasive.
‘N
ot surprised, Eden. This’ll end a few careers, I can tell you. The boat sailed without an escort – you know that? They didn’t bother to put red crosses on the funnels. They’d got 1,700 men on board – as a liner in Civvy Street, it managed 500. It stinks.
‘Everyone’s desperate to wash their hands of it. It’s a devil of a job trying to find out anything. The spokesman who helped The Times got carpeted. They want it forgotten – Home Office, Downing Street, they’re all in a fug. But it won’t go away – some of these Eyeties will be missed. One was head chef at The Ritz – another at the Café Royal. Half the West End’s looking for names – are they dead, did they get out alive?
‘I’ve got a number here you can try – in Bury, there’s an internment camp there and they’ve got one of the Eyeties dealing with relatives cos he knows the lingo. Pathetic, really – one man, eight hundred dead.’
The camp was called Warth Mills – an old cotton factory north of Manchester, and within easy reach of the quayside at Liverpool. Internees had been gathered there before being shipped out to Canada.
The phone rang and rang. Brooke was about to give up when a soft voice answered: ‘Father Rossi.’
The accent was extraordinary, a subtle blend of Scots and Italian. Father Gaetano Rossi explained he’d been scheduled to go to Canada on the next ship after the Arandora Star but had been hauled out of the line on the dockside and told he had a job to do. They’d given him an old office, and packing cases of passports and documents. He was to compile lists of the dead, and survivors.
