by Guy Sheppard
‘So she didn’t admit anything?’
‘No.’
More mourners entered the garden to bid Bruno goodbye. Sensing her opportunity, Jo stood up to go. She gave Bella a cursory whistle which she obeyed with a cursory bark. Sometimes a dog could be taken too much for granted. This whole business of Sarah’s car crash was most bizarre and unwelcome. Bruno was forgetting that she was terribly upset, too.
There was something almost manic in the widower’s emphatic conviction that his wife had been deliberately targeted, which was not helped by the hard twist in his mouth and the cold look in his eyes. All the passion that had been unleashed by drinking too much beer was tinged with an unusual bitterness – he appeared unnaturally vengeful.
Perhaps when he had sobered up he would have forgotten all about it.
Wouldn’t that be lovely.
On the other hand, that boar’s head and message left on Sarah’s car had to mean something?
But she did not move fast enough.
Bruno came after her, seized her arm.
‘Sarah admired you a lot, Mrs Wheeler. You think you might look into it for me? As I say, I literally have no one else to turn to.’
Which was why her answer was no.
Which was why her answer was yes.
‘Suppose I do ask a few questions about her, what then?’
‘You’ll have to do more than that, Mrs Wheeler. As soon as you start investigating you’ll see how serious this really is.’
‘You think?’
‘Don’t we owe it to her to discover the truth because I’m convinced that her death goes way beyond any accidental hit-and-run.’
Jo felt a shiver go down her spine.
‘What exactly are you trying to say?’
‘I’m not mad, Mrs Wheeler! Please help me. You’ll see something’s wrong as soon as you delve into it, I know you will. If I’m mistaken, then so be it – I’ll say sorry in advance for bothering you. But I’m not wrong. Someone has to speak out, because I’m quite sure Sarah has been murdered.’
NINE
Nora Kelly had never heard such a piercing scream, not since her dead baby had been torn from her arms. Back then, that scream had been her own.
She let go the stainless steel basket that she was about to tip into a deburring barrel and its load of gold-coloured finger rings and necklace chains spilled everywhere – she trod half-moon earrings with decorative fretwork patterns like flowers as she peered at the factory floor. What with the deafening stamping press banging out fresh pieces of metal nearby and the general fug in the air, she was confused as to what awful accident might have occurred.
Someone else took up the cry. It was the Frenchman Raoul wondering, like her, what the hell was going on.
Bridget and Mary were next to shriek. They stopped gluing imitation sapphires on to rings and brooches, threw down their gummy paintbrushes in ashtrays full of water and mounted their stools. There they stood clutching their knees as they peered all round. A few yards further along the workshop, the ex-soldier with the nervous tick and explosive temper who went by the name of Nigel (not his real name) looked up from his Startrite five speed drilling plinth. He was just bringing its diamond-tipped bit to bear on a brass plate in a shower of gold dust, when something ran over his feet. He let go the long metal handle and the drill recoiled with a bang.
‘What the Devil?’
Raoul’s compatriot, Thibaut, also stopped what he was doing. He eased his foot off the pedal of his electric soldering and demagnetising machine when, in the general confusion, he banged his brow on the hot, bare bulb that hung over his bench.
‘What is it?’
Nora saw something pause and look up through the slots in the wooden decking at her toes – she caught the glint of a shiny black eye. Whatever it was squealed. Rather, its constant scream was cut short by rib-crushing contractions. Its body pulsed with pain as it arched its back to stave off each terrifying spasm.
Soon it was off again, driven by the next convulsive movement. The wretched animal was trying to outrun its death throes, she realised, it was seeking refuge beneath the wet wooden boards on which everyone walked in the workshop. Instinct drove it on towards the door, to air, space and freedom as pain devoured its vital organs.
Factory foreman Kevin Devaney marched past with his pipe in his hand and shot her a nasty look.
‘Get back to work, you whore.’
‘But that rat is dying. It could bite someone.’
‘I couldn’t care less about that.’
‘Did you poison it?’
‘What do you expect? The boss is due here at any minute.’
‘What if someone gets bitten?’
‘My point exactly.’
So saying, Devaney opened the shutters to the workshop just as a two-seater SS Jaguar 100 sports car cruised to a halt in the yard. One tyre went over the blinded, bewildered rodent. It popped it like a balloon. Bloodied the wire spoke wheel. Nora saw the foreman run round the car to open its driver’s door, only to stand back respectfully. Even a bully like him knew his place in the pecking order.
‘Miss Boreman?’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Er…’
The driver extended a long leg over the car’s curvaceous, red running board; she emerged from its low-cut door wearing her fox fur coat and a bulbous red beret trimmed with a pompom.
‘What’s wrong, Mr Devaney? Cat got your tongue?’
‘We don’t see you very often.’
‘My brother couldn’t make it today, so here I am.’
Thibaut made a face at Nora who stifled a giggle. She desperately urged him to resume work at the electric furnace where he melted a block of metal into silver lava, ready to pour it into rubber moulds. She was reminding him how necessary it was to err on the side of caution, something she had learnt polishing dormitory floors with beeswax for hours on end under the watchful eyes of flint-faced nuns. She, especially, had reason to feel nervous about unexpected visitors, ever since she had run away from “St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home” in her native Ireland.
Devaney reminded her of the redoubtable Mother Odile who had never once stinted on the use of the rod.
Best to look busy, she decided. Other workers did the same. They set about wiring, drilling and electro-plating more jewellery in a great hurry.
Devaney kicked aside the fallen basket on the greasy duckboards that led past the benches. He was all fingers and thumbs suddenly.
‘Do please watch how you go, Miss Boreman, or you’ll ruin your shoes.’
‘Thank you so much.’
The unexpected visitor trod cautiously in her lace-up, brown brogues which she always wore to the factory, on account of their robust heels of stacked leather. Effluent from acid and rinse tanks flowed along an open gutter. Each bang from the metal press shook the ground like a small earthquake.
‘Shall we go straight to the office?’ urged Devaney, anxiously.
But Miss Boreman had come to a halt beside Thibaut. She watched him open the mould to reveal a profusion of delicate, spidery grooves which cast fancy brass fretwork in the shape of lace-like shells. Idly, she picked up a paintbrush used for cleaning the finished article. She rolled its stem between finger and thumb like a miniature witch’s broomstick. Then she placed it very carefully back on the bench before her.
‘Fact is, Mr Devaney, my brother and I are not happy. Ever since The Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham was mostly turned over to making munitions, it has been up to us to fill the gap in the market. Women still want to buy pretty things. It’s good for morale.’
‘But more and more orders are coming in for army buttons. We have government contracts to fulfil for soldiers’ uniforms…’
‘This war won’t last for ever. I’m thinking of the future. Now’s our chance to establish a whole new business. Demand for our jewellery continues to grow, yet our production is slow.’
‘If you could just step this way for a moment, Miss Boreman…’
‘So tell me what’s wrong?’
‘The weather’s bad. People are falling ill.’
‘Say that again.’
‘One of the older women can’t stop coughing. Fingers split and don’t heal in the cold…’
‘That wasn’t what I asked. I’m here to see the books.’
Devaney looked flustered. He really didn’t want a dressing down in front of the workers.
‘I’ll get right on it, Miss Boreman.’
‘Yeah, I suppose you will.’
TEN
Freya knew when not to speak out of turn. James didn’t like any noise at the breakfast table – he wouldn’t even let her tune in to the radio. Heaven forbid that her knife should squeal on her plate as she sliced the rind off her bacon. Generally, reticence was her magic cloak. She could hope to ‘vanish’ by not revealing character, feeling or even intuition.
She listened to her husband gobble his food while he pored long and hard over dates in his diary. Now and then he uttered a piggish grunt as he geared himself up to deal with whatever problems the day might bring. She admired his entrepreneurial steeliness. His willpower. Even his heartlessness. He fiddled with his 9-carat gold tie pin or rang the bell for Betty to bring him some more toast or pour him fresh coffee from the new percolator. He swore as his tongue slurped the dregs from his mug.
Her own tongue was a fleshy, muscular slug in her mouth which threatened to choke her as she tried to remain calm.
The solution to his nervous tension today, she wanted to tell him, wasn’t more threats, extortion or violence. They were his stock-in-trade, but they only created more problems at home.
‘I don’t know when I’ll be back tonight,’ said James without looking up.
Freya’s hand froze on her fork. Its prongs stopped at her lips. Was he really going to leave her to pack all his things by herself? Moving home was a complicated business and they still had lots to sort out. As it was, there were half-filled boxes and portmanteaus of belongings still awaiting her attention, here, all over Drake’s House. She looked down at the table and coughed. It was a quiet, prudent choking sound which she could pass off as a piece of stringy meat.
‘But you said…’
‘I know what I said.’
James continued to make a pig of himself. If it was one thing that he appreciated, it was their maid’s cooking, thought Freya. She listened to him tasting, masticating, swallowing. His greedy tongue was a mockery of hers; it had in its arsenal all sorts of ferocious weapons – sharp, caustic, dangerous, short. It could snap at her like a crocodile. Then again, it could be ironical, humorous, facetious, tender.
The problem this morning was Sam. School classes might have been suspended for the foreseeable future, but still he wanted to sport his old cap which was far too small, frayed and falling to pieces. James had snatched it off his head and thrown it away.
‘Ignore him. He’ll soon forget all about it. If school resumes after Christmas, which I doubt, he can wear his new one.’
Freya fidgeted. Had she not already stressed that Sam couldn’t do without it? Last night he had struggled to go to sleep for the very thought of it. That old cap was his crutch. A reassurance. A mark of continuity and stability. It was worse than his book of trains.
‘Please, James, be kind for once.’
‘No, he can’t have it. He has to stop being so silly and learn to let go. You see, it’ll be a milestone.’
But it wasn’t all right, it was a contest. She knew it. James knew it. In consigning the cap to the dustbin in the backyard he had issued a challenge: it was his word against hers and he was winning.
‘By the way, Freya, we move into the new house on Saturday.’
‘Saturday? But we agreed Monday.’
‘I decided to bring the date forward.’
‘Without telling me?’
‘Now I have.’
She carefully sliced more bacon on her plate. She cut it into little pieces. Anatomized it. She did it the same way a pathologist sought to examine something dead part by part – she analysed and criticized it in minute detail.
‘I won’t wait up for you, then,’ she said, referring back to his original comment.
James nodded and left the table, whereupon Freya expressed an inaudible sigh of relief.
Not until she watched him leave for work did she own up to that festering scream that she kept locked in her throat.
Her spine sprang back into shape after sitting so tensely at the kitchen table for so long.
She picked up the ignition key to her Riley 9 Lynx Tourer and stepped outside. She rolled her head and felt her aching neck. There might be no school to which to drive Sam any more, but that didn’t diminish the burning temptation to take off somewhere new, wild and unfettered.
Instead, she ran as far as the dustbin, lifted its lid and dipped her hand into the still warm ashes from last night’s fires. Suddenly she felt as if she could breathe again. She returned to the house just as quickly.
‘Don’t let your father see it, Sam.’
‘Don’t let my father see it.’
‘It’s our secret.’
‘It’s our secret.’
She was striking the first blow to foster what might never be more than a small reprieve, by doing something very risky. No one, not even Betty, had seen her do it or so she hoped. In retrieving the dirty old school cap from the rubbish, she had scored a minor victory which somehow shaped her resistance.
But there it must stay for now, under wraps, so to speak.
Like that strange business of the candles in the cathedral.
Monday November 25, 1940
Roofless, half-collapsed houses all look the same. One ruin merges with another as vast quantities of loose bricks and timbers spill into the road. A few firefighters clamber like ants up and down the scree. I’m walking in a wilderness of smoking rubble. Here a multi-storey building, doorless and windowless, has been disembowelled while a few paces further on, over all the trailing hosepipes, someone else’s home has been turned inside out – I’m gazing in disbelief at blue wallpaper on bedroom walls that now stand open to the drizzle.
Here’s what I’ve done. I’ve come as far as I can into what was the commercial heart of Bristol.
So where are the restaurants, dress shops, tobacconists and tailors, to name but a few? A few hours ago you could buy almost anything here.
But there’s nothing left of any of it.
Not a damned thing.
With the daylight comes an awful silence. Those noisy burglar alarms and barking dogs cannot contradict the grotesque absence of noise. Then I realise. My head still rings with the scream of sirens, the heavy drone of enemy planes, the thumps of ack-ack guns and the earth-shaking blasts of exploding bombs. The sky might be empty but that doesn’t stop me listening for the whistle of incendiaries. That silence is fear.
There’s still some blood in the gutters, but it’s the smell I can’t stand. Flesh, both human and animal, smokes under debris that has yet to be cleared.
I’m here to find Jack and Emmy.
Only I have the right to lay claim to their blackened bones.
ELEVEN
There was no going back now, thought Jo. She just couldn’t. The Boreman Properties’ advertisement in the local fishmonger’s window promised somewhere that had all the hallmarks of a historic town house of high quality.
When someone like her found themselves all alone, they owed it to themselves to make the best of their predicament without burdening other people. That went for war widows especially. Which was why she was so determined not to make such a hash of it this time. To put it bluntly, this was her one chance to make a new home for herself and her baby, now that her previous landlady had so thoughtfully evicted her with one week’s notice – not everyone would tolerate an unmarried mother under their roof. It was entirely her
own fault – she should never have opened her big mouth, been truthful!
She was feeling distinctly upbeat when a smartly dressed woman drove up to the door of 18A Edwy Parade in her red sports car.
‘Mrs Jo Wheeler? How lovely! We spoke on the phone. How-do-you-do. My name is Tia Boreman.’
‘How-do-you-do. Thank you for agreeing to show me round the property so soon.’
‘Of course it needs a bit of work,’ said Tia and ignored Jo’s outstretched hand to look in her bag for a key. She peered past the brim of her blue trilby trimmed with petersham ribbon, while she struggled to unlock the door to the little, red-brick terraced home. As owner and landlord, she was keen to get in off the street as soon as possible, evidently.
‘I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty,’ said Jo, with a laugh.
Bella sniffed a rusty ironing board lying abandoned in the tiny front garden. A dog should be able to trust her owner’s judgement without question, she supposed.
‘There, we’re in,’ said Tia and flashed a gold tooth at them both.
Some hard wood blocks from a child’s box of Picabrix blocked the hall.
‘Previous tenant leave in a hurry, did they?’ said Jo.
‘War widow, like you. Fell behind with the rent. I had to sling her and her five kids out on their ear.’
‘I can tell.’
Bella barked. Someone needed to take a good look at the peeling wallpaper. No, really, they should. What dog could be expected to live in such squalor? Yet here they were, about to slum it. She couldn’t rule it out.
Tia, smelling of jasmine, clutched her ruched, shell-shaped handbag close to her red, knee-length fur coat. She sidled like a crab down the narrow hallway, should any of the filthy black marks on the wall somehow leap out at her. She might turn up her nose at the glassy-eyed fox fur round her landlord’s neck, thought Jo, but she recognised a bargain when she saw it. A fur with its legs and head still attached was classified as a pelt and not subject to rationing.
‘What you have here, Mrs Wheeler, is a rare opportunity to rent a charming property which is only a ten-minute walk from Gloucester city centre.’
