Sure and Certain Death

by Barbara Nadel

  Mrs Darling looked at me, puzzled, and then said, ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘There was an explosion and then he was gone!’ Because that was how it had been. That was exactly what I had seen. No agonised last words on the bloke’s lips, no bits of arms and legs and head flying about in all directions. ‘He vaporised,’ I said. I looked at Neville Robinson, who was still staring down at the floor, as now was his wife. But Mrs Darling looked shocked, genuinely horrified.

  ‘God help us!’

  ‘I hadn’t realised that bodies did that,’ I said. ‘What did I know?’

  ‘And so . . .’

  ‘And so I was supposed to carry on walking,’ I said. ‘Captain Southern, our officer, came over and shouted at me and told me I was to keep walking. But . . . I couldn’t move. The Germans hadn’t stopped firing, there was smoke and blood and screams everywhere and me and Captain Southern could have been hit at any time. But I just couldn’t move!’

  I couldn’t cry in front of someone like Neville Robinson. I couldn’t cry in front of his White Feather girl wife – and I didn’t. I became bitter and my voice I knew twisted with my hatred, because now was the part of the story where that really began. ‘He could see that every part of me was shaking in terror, but Captain Southern still shouted at me to get on and walk forwards,’ I said. ‘He told me that if I didn’t I would be shot.’

  There was a silence. I obviously hadn’t been shot but I had disobeyed an order.

  ‘I hit him,’ I said. ‘Punched him straight in the face.’

  The silence became a room holding its breath.

  ‘Mr Hancock . . .’

  ‘No one saw, or if they did, they didn’t take any notice. Who cares what goes on when death is looking you in the face? Captain Southern could have shot me then and there, but to his credit he didn’t. What he did do was probably worse,’ I said, ‘because he dragged me forwards into the guns, screaming at me, telling me I was a worthless wog who didn’t know his duty. Somehow I began to function again. If you can call what I did functioning. But I shot Germans, which was what I was supposed to do. With Captain Southern beside me, I shot two in the face and God knows how many more in other parts of their bodies. I still see the heads of those I shot in the face. I . . .’ Suddenly aware of the fact that I had probably gone too far, that people don’t want or need to know what I see in my waking nightmares, I paused, and then I took a breath and said, ‘I don’t know when Captain Southern died. But suddenly he wasn’t pulling at me any more, suddenly he was just gone. Vaporised maybe, like that grenadier. I don’t know. But I never saw him again. You, Mr Robinson, probably feel I should have handed myself in to my superiors. You maybe consider me a coward.’

  Neville Robinson said nothing.

  ‘But we captured the German positions we had been told to fight for, us, a load of rank amateurs. It was considered one of the few victories of that day,’ I said. ‘Not that I consider it so even now. The whole thing was a farce, from beginning to end. The Great War! What a waste of life and time and sanity!’

  Still Neville Robinson said nothing. But then what could someone like him say? I feel different from most people, but from him – it was almost as if he was from an alien planet.

  ‘So when a young lady tried to give me a white feather when I came home on leave after all that, I just ran away,’ I said. ‘I ran and I ran and I’ve been running ever since. Not because I was afraid of her and her feather, but because I was afraid of myself, what I might do.’

  Exhausted, I stopped speaking and panted to catch my breath. Everyone looked at me.

  Then, in a burst of what felt like spite, Esme Robinson said, ‘Well, if you’re so angry about all of that, then maybe it’s you who’s been killing all our old friends, Mr Hancock.’

  Mrs Darling shot me a warning look. I think she thought that I might just explode, but I was too tired by that time, so I said, ‘Well maybe I am, Mrs Robinson. But then if that’s the case I’m a bit of a bloody fool, aren’t I, warning you? Why should I warn you in particular? What is so special about you?’

  ‘Well, nothing. Myself and Neville are modest people. We . . .’

  ‘Mrs Robinson, you and your husband can heed my warning or not, but apart from your sister in Canada, we still have to find one more White Feather girl,’ I said. ‘Now, do you know where Fernanda Mascarenhas might be?’

  I didn’t stay long with Mrs Darling after the Robinsons had gone. I hadn’t wanted to go into my history at the Battle of the Somme and was still cross that the way Neville and Esme – self-satisfied and blindly patriotic – had in effect forced me to do so. I also didn’t feel as if they had really taken my warning about the possibility of Esme being in danger seriously. But Mrs Darling assured me that she, at least, would take care and would also look out for any sign of the elusive Fernanda Mascarenhas.

  ‘Portuguese her people was,’ she said. ‘From down Canning Town somewhere. Not that none of us ever saw her place, I don’t think. She was a proud girl, she wouldn’t have wanted us to. As I told you before, poor they was, her family.’

  Lascars or sailors originally from India have lived in Canning Town for years. Mostly Hindus, some of them were also natives of the old Portuguese colony of Goa. They were Christians to a man and tended to have taken Portuguese names too. I wondered if Fernanda’s family had been one of those. Not that Mrs Darling or anyone else who’d known her had ever mentioned that Fernanda was anything other than a white girl.

  Although we didn’t have a raid that night, I nevertheless walked home, to be immediately presented with a bombshell.

  ‘Arthur’s been called up,’ Aggie said to me as I walked into the kitchen. ‘Air force. Gonna be a fly boy.’

  She said it lightly but she didn’t smile as she did so. Aggie is no fool; she knows as well as I do that no one in air crew, be he pilot, rear gunner or navigator, lasts very long up there. Not usually.

  I sighed. Much as I liked the boy, much as I feared for him, there was little I could do about his call-up. And besides, Arthur was by his own admission champing at the bit to get out and have a go at Adolf.

  ‘You’ll have to find another bearer,’ Aggie said. ‘Another old codger to go along with Walter.’

  I rolled my eyes and then sat down at the kitchen table. Walter Bridges, my elderly pall-bearer, is also a not inconsiderable lover of pubs and their products.

  ‘Well, you can’t have another boy, Frank,’ Aggie said as she came over with a cup of tea and put it down on the table in front of me. ‘Whoever you get’ll just end up going off to the Forces.’

  ‘Unless I do it,’ said another voice from the corner of the kitchen over by the range. I hadn’t noticed Nan sitting by the stove, warming her hands.

  ‘You?’

  ‘Why not?’ Her face was almost completely unlit by the one weak gas lamp beside the larder. This had the effect of making it look as if Aggie and I were having a conversation with a skirt and a pair of shoes.

  ‘Why not?’ Aggie said. ‘Well, Nan, what can I say? I mean, apart from the fact that I don’t really see you carrying a heavy coffin alongside a drunk and any other odds and sods Frank can get together, who’s going to look after the Duchess while you’re off doing your new job?’

  ‘Mum says she can do most things for herself these days,’ Nan said.

  ‘Oh, so you’ve already discussed it with her, have you?’ Ever since Nancy had announced that she’d once been a member of a White Feather group, Aggie had been far more harsh than she usually was with her. But then so had I.

  ‘I don’t see why I can’t do it!’ Nancy said as she leaned forward in her chair so that now I could see her face. ‘Anyway, it’s up to Frank.’

  ‘I worry about the Duchess,’ I said. My mother is old, she has arthritis and I know that on bad days she can neither walk nor feed herself with ease.

  ‘Mum says that she can manage,’ Nan said. There was some determination in her voice. I knew she’d always harboured a faint hope that
she might help out with the business, but it had never come to anything before. Maybe she felt that in light of what she’d done back in the Great War, she had to try and prove herself to us all in some way.

  ‘Well, Mum can’t manage!’ Aggie snapped back angrily. ‘You know that!’

  ‘She said she can!’ Nancy said. ‘I told her that Arthur was leaving and I said that maybe I could help out our Frank, and Mum said she thought it was a good idea. I can sort her out before I go to work, and anyway, it ain’t like we’re going to be out all day or . . .’

  ‘Look,’ I interrupted, ‘the Duchess is asleep now. How do I know what she may or may not have said? Why don’t I ask her tomorrow?’

  ‘Because it’s bloody ridiculous!’ Aggie said. She pointed to Nan. ‘She can’t carry a coffin! Look at her! Five stone wet through!’

  ‘I am not five stone!’

  Aggie, annoyed at being taken so literally, dived into her handbag, took out her fags, lit up and said, ‘Oh, you know what I mean, Nan! You’re skinny, aren’t you? You know you are! More strength in a fag paper than in your arms!’

  ‘I can work,’ Nan said bitterly. ‘I’d like to see you lift Mum in and out of bed when she’s bad!’

  In that she wasn’t wrong. Thin but strong is our Nan, always has been. But to have her as one of my bearers? That was quite another thing. For starters, I had to decide whether I wanted to work with Nan or not, and further, whether she would be able to put up with being around Walter and myself. My language can be a bit rough at times, while Walter’s is more often than not ripe, to say the least. Not that I was really worried about what sort of effect that might have on Nan. I was still too angry at her to be that bothered. But I did have to consider the Duchess, whatever she may or may not have said to Nan, and also our customers. After all, war or no war, not many females had entered the undertaking profession. I couldn’t think of one.

  ‘I’ll speak to Mum about it in the morning,’ I said finally. ‘See what she says.’

  ‘So you’re not saying no, then?’

  Nan’s eyes shone for the first time in a long time. I didn’t know, under the circumstances, whether to be happy or sad. Aggie left the kitchen in either disgust or irritation and I changed the subject.

  ‘Nan,’ I said, ‘can you tell me anything about your old mate Fernanda Mascarenhas?’

  She looked a little taken aback for a bit, and then she said, ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘She lived in Canning Town,’ I said. ‘Do you know where? Did you ever go to her house?’

  Nan shrugged. ‘No. They was very poor, Frank, her people.’ And then all of a sudden I saw something occur to her and she said, ‘But I think Marie might have gone there. I’m sure she did. Marie and Fernanda became really firm pals at that time.’

  ‘Nan,’ I said, ‘was Fernanda Mascarenhas white?’

  She looked at me steadily for a few moments, probably with more confidence than she had done for a while, and then she said bitterly, ‘Whiter than either of us, Frank.’

  Chapter Ten

  In spite of the fact that no raids had taken place the previous night, I’d slept little by the time I got up the following morning. Because I’d slept so badly, I got up early and took myself off for a while before the business of the day began. I headed west, towards Canning Town and Hannah. Whether she’d be awake at half past four in the morning, I didn’t know. That she’d be alone I could be sure of, however. Hannah doesn’t have men staying over, as it were; only I can ever do that. I don’t do it often.

  I walked down the Barking Road towards Canning Town, past houses – some empty, some not – shops, churches and great pyramids of rubble. They were everywhere, lurking in the darkness like misshapen thoughts. Like the smell of the sewers, rubble that was once someone’s business or home dominates life in the East End. Scrambling my way to Hannah’s house on Rathbone Street, I did see a few people – wardens and one solitary copper. But most had taken advantage of the quiet night, and beds were, for once, full of the sleeping.

  Rathbone Street gives its name to a market which, at one time, was a lively and thriving thing. Now business still goes on, amongst the dust and the rubble, but it’s of a poor, half-starved variety. Of course certain elements on Rathbone Street have always had a hard time making a penny or two. Where my Hannah lives is not the only house that numbers prostitutes amongst its tenants. The street has always had them and, if it survives the bombing, probably always will. Not that any of the ‘girls’ down there will ever make her fortune. In general they’re too old for that, and their customers don’t have deep pockets. Foreign sailors and dark-skinned local lascars – men who look like me – tend to be their regulars. No lusty aristocrats out for some cheap fun in Canning Town. There’s poor and then there’s really poor, with the latter not much appealing to the British upper crust. That said, Hannah doesn’t do too bad. I give her whatever help I can, financial and otherwise, and where she lives isn’t a terrible place. She has her room in the house of the old abortionist Dot Harris – it suits her. Dot has to be eighty if she’s a day, and is full of aches and pains and complaints. I was surprised to see her standing outside her street door so early in the morning.

  ‘Mrs Harris?’ I said as I walked towards the house.

  Dot, who had obviously been in the middle of some sort of trance when I came upon her, put one pudgy hand up to her chest and said, ‘Bloody hell!’ Then, finally focusing in on my face, she said, ‘Blimey, Mr H, you give me a turn! What you doing out and about at this time in the morning?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ I said. ‘Wanted to walk . . .’

  Like everyone else in the East End, Dot knows my reputation. She rolled her faded blue eyes and then she said, ‘You know, Mr H, you should try to sleep when you can, given the state of your nerves.’

  ‘You too should try to sleep, Mrs Harris.’

  Dot smiled. Like me she sleeps little and never ever goes down into any air raid shelter. There’s one in the back yard of her house for the use of her girls. But Dot, like me, is no lover of confined spaces.

  ‘I was looking at the houses round here,’ she said as she pulled the corners of her shawl a little bit more tightly around her neck. ‘I like looking at them when it’s quiet. Some of them are empty now, of course, gutted out, many of them. But some have got people in, and it’s them I think about when I look around in the early hours, when it’s quiet. Makes me smile thinking about them all tucked up and sleeping away. Makes me think about the old days.’

  ‘Before the war?’

  ‘Yes. You come to see my Hannah, have you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘She’s soundo,’ Dot said. ‘Her and Bella was busy last night. But then I don’t suppose you want to hear that, do you?’

  I looked away, my mind searching desperately for a subject to which I could change the conversation quickly. I don’t like what Hannah does. I offered to marry her and change her life for ever, but, as well as being independent, Hannah doesn’t trust anyone, not even me, not really.

  ‘Mrs Harris,’ I said as something did finally come to me, ‘does the name Mascarenhas mean anything to you?’

  ‘Why?’

  Even with me, her eyes narrowed into lines of suspicion. They don’t give anyone information without a fight in places like Canning Town.

  ‘My sister had a friend with the surname Mascarenhas,’ I said. ‘Years ago.’

  ‘You mean your older sister?’ Dot said.

  ‘Yes, Nancy,’ I said. ‘She . . .’

  ‘Ronaldo Mascarenhas worked as a steward on ships as went all over the world,’ Dot said. ‘Brought his wife over here with him who never spoke a word of English. But they had three daughters who I suppose must be around about your age or your sister’s. I remember their names to unusual.’ She smiled. ‘Isaura, Piodard and Fernanda.’

  At the last name I felt my heart jump. ‘Fernanda!’ I said. ‘Yes, that was Nancy’s old friend, Fernanda! Do you know where
they live?’

  Dot Harris frowned. ‘Oh, Ronaldo and his missus went back home years ago,’ she said. ‘I think the girls stayed here, you know, in England.’

  ‘Including Fernanda?’

  ‘Yes, although I don’t know where any of them are. You sure your Nancy went around with Fernanda?’ Dot asked. ‘You sure it weren’t one of the other girls?’

  ‘No.’ Dot looked troubled and so I leaned in closer towards her and said, ‘Why?’

  Dot Harris did what she didn’t often do and looked embarrassed. ‘Well, Mr H, it’s, well . . . it’s . . .’

  ‘Dot?’

  She took a deep breath and then she said, ‘Your older sister, Mr H, is a very dark lady, ain’t she? Like you and . . .’

  Frowning now, I said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ronaldo Mascarenhas and his missus was from India, like your mum,’ Dot said. ‘Portuguese India some people call where they come from. That’s where they went back to. But anyway, they had three kids. Two of them was brown, like both of them, and one was white – like your younger sister. She’s a very light lady, ain’t she?’

  ‘Fernanda Mascarenhas was white.’ I knew that, I’d been told it, but no one had until then let me know that her parents were black. But then maybe no one else I had spoken to had known. Maybe that was why no one except apparently the late Marie Abrahams had ever been to Fernanda’s house. I was just thinking “why Marie?” when Dot, entirely off her own bat, possibly supplied me with the answer.

  ‘’Course, Fernanda stayed on because she got married here,’ she said. ‘Fixed up with some Jewish bloke, relative of a friend of hers, I heard. But anyway, Ronaldo was wild. Strict Catholics the Mascarenhas family. Cut the girl right out, they did. Right out!’

  As far as I knew, Marie Abrahams had been an only child. Her and her father had lived together for years before her untimely death. But then maybe it was another relative of hers who had married Fernanda? Doris knew the family somewhat. I would have to speak to her about it.