Sure and Certain Death

by Barbara Nadel

  Esme lay down on her bed and thought about Neville. In all the ways that were important to her, he’d been a good husband. He’d always supported her, had done generally whatever she asked and had maintained a respectable façade with their neighbours, family and friends. He couldn’t really help it if he liked that dirty stuff. Men generally did. And although it was distasteful that he should do that with cheap, common street women, that was far better than if he’d had an actual mistress. Neville had never brought any of that into their marriage. Esme need never have even known. But no one could possibly attend so many retired police officers’ meetings, and one night she’d paid to have him followed. He’d gone to a known bawdy house in Canning Town to visit, apparently, a prostitute who was no longer young. Eventually, around that rough and distasteful company, Neville had met his death. Esme sighed. If only her husband could have been content with kisses! If only he could have settled himself to his real retired police officers’ meetings, and the circles at Margaret Darling’s place in East Ham of course. Poor Margaret! She’d tried so hard to look after Esme in the wake of Neville’s death. Esme was really going to disappoint her. But she couldn’t go on without Neville, she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to be one of those burdensome single women that people always pitied! And besides, every time she thought about carrying on without Neville she got a pain in her chest so harsh and severe it completely took her breath away. Esme propped herself up on her pillows and took the lid off the Ribena bottle. The smell of the disinfectant made her gag. But there was no point in delaying things. She’d made up her mind. It was now or never.

  Esme poured the rank green liquid into her mouth and began to cough immediately. Coughing and gagging again now, she fought to swallow what she could feel was burning a hole in her throat. Somehow she got some down, even though she spat what looked like most of it out over her nice clean counterpane. Eyes watering and bulging with the strain and the pain, Esme’s mind raced as she thought about what to do next. The pain and just the sheer difficulty, not to mention the messiness of the act, was making her panic. For some reason she wanted to speak, to hear her own voice one last time, but all that came out of her was a hot, agonising rattle. God, she hadn’t wanted to die like this! Retching and vomiting and turning her lovely bedroom into some sort of ghastly, filthy abattoir! She leaned forward so she could cough more easily and saw that most of what she was bringing up now was blood. Esme began to cry, and in spite of the fact that she still really, really wanted to go beyond the veil and be with her Neville once again, she began to whisper, ‘Help! Help me!’

  The pain in her wrecked throat moved to her chest and increased in intensity so that Esme began to howl, a long, fierce, tattered scream.

  For the next two nights the raids were long and hellish. My night-time runs were lit up by massive fires all over the docks and especially in the manors closest to them: North Woolwich and Silvertown. As usual I can’t be absolutely certain about what I did when I was out fleeing from the bombs. But I know that at one point I was in Central Park, East Ham. I remember plants of some sort wrapping themselves around my feet and tripping me up. At the time this was just simply annoying. But later I realised that what I’d probably tramped through with my great big boots was some poor sod’s allotment. A lot of the parks are turned over to the growing of veg for the war effort – have been ever since the start.

  By that Friday morning, I was dead on my feet. Aside from the raids, we’d done three funerals the day after Neville Robinson’s, and then on the Thursday I’d spent a good eight hours talking to bereaved families and making arrangements with them. Nan, apparently, had managed to fit in a visit to Claybury.

  ‘Old Mr Abrahams don’t talk even to me no more,’ she said sadly.

  I was cleaning my boots at the time and looked up at her with what I knew were horribly bloodshot eyes.

  ‘I don’t care what Fernanda Mascarenhas might say,’ my sister continued, ‘it wasn’t me who gave the poor old thing such a start last week. It was when he saw them two.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘My understanding is that Mr Abrahams began to scream when Fernanda and her husband and you were all together. Although why he should do so after, according to you, talking about Edward quite comfortably, I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, well . . .’

  ‘Nan, was there anyone else with you?’ I asked. ‘Any of the other ladies who help out up there, or maybe a nurse? A patient?’

  On the Wednesday, one of our funerals had been for an ex-Plaistow copper. Sergeant Hill had attended on behalf of the division and so I’d spoken to him about the possibility of the so-called Ripper being an ex-prisoner or asylum inmate. He’d said that if he found the time he’d look into that. Here I was doing my own little bit towards that.

  ‘No. Mrs Ravens and Nurse Belmont were up the other end of the ward and Alice was helping Bernie to drink some soup. Nothing was happening.’

  Beyond knowing the name Alice, I didn’t have a clue about who any of these people were.

  ‘Oh, I’m going over to Alice’s tomorrow,’ Nancy continued. ‘She’s invited me to tea with her and her mother.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said. My brain was really still thinking about Nathan Abrahams. If he had indeed screamed when Fernanda, Edward and Nancy went to talk to him, did that have any significance? Nathan had never said whether or not he’d seen anyone who could possibly have killed his daughter the night that Marie died. All he’d managed to blurt out was that a woman friend had visited his girl earlier in the evening. Of course there were problems between Nathan’s family and Edward, and the actual sight of his errant nephew might very well have upset the old man enough to make him scream. But what if the couple from Clapham had brought to mind something else? Something about his daughter’s killer?

  Nan, looking into my seemingly blank face, said, ‘I’ll put Alice’s address in the diary.’ Then she left.

  ‘All right, love,’ I said to the thin air she left in her wake. I decided that I’d go out on Saturday too. In the morning I’d have one last shot at speaking to Nathan Abrahams.

  It wasn’t even starting to get dark by the time Doris began to close up the shop for the night. I wanted her and Walter to be able to get home before the sirens went. She was just getting the key to lock up the front door when a bloke of about fifty-five walked in. I was sitting at Doris’s desk and was the first to see him. A bit of a grimy, rough-looking geezer. I frowned at him and said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘You ’Ancock, are you?’ he said in what some would have taken for an aggressive way. But I’m an East Ender, I know that this is the way with some of us, particularly the men.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘I brought a message from my missus.’

  ‘Your missus?’

  Doris, who had been hovering beside the desk with the door key in her hand, said, ‘Mr Hancock, do you want me to lock up or . . .’

  I took the key from her and said, ‘That’s all right, Doris, I’ll do it. You get off now.’

  With a quick, uncertain glance at our visitor, Doris got her coat and left. As soon as the door closed behind her I said, ‘Your missus?’

  ‘Mrs Darling,’ he replied. So this was the famous ‘old man’ who shared a Christian name with me. ‘I’m her messenger boy, postman, whatever she wants me to be.’ He didn’t look that happy about it. ‘But anyway, my old lady thought you should know that Esme Robinson is dead.’

  I was shocked, even if I wasn’t that surprised. As well as what Mrs Darling had told me about Esme’s past, there was also the very final way, after Neville’s funeral, in which Esme had bade me goodbye. And the medium herself had been unsure, I knew. She had almost begged Esme to come back and continue her stay with her in East Ham. But Esme had insisted upon being alone. Had she indeed done something to herself, or had someone else done it for her? I took in a deep breath in order to try and calm myself.

  Then Mr Darling
provided the stark truth. ‘Topped herself,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Disinfectant.’

  ‘God help us!’ I said. ‘Jesus Christ!’ Drinking disinfectant isn’t a clean or a quick way to go. I’ve dealt with a few disinfectant deaths in my time, I’m sorry to say. It is an agonising and desperate way to die. Poor Esme, she must have truly felt utterly unable to go on without her husband. I gestured for Mr Darling to sit down, which, after first taking the flat cap off his head, he did. ‘When? How did Mrs Darling find out?’

  ‘Coppers,’ Mr Darling said.

  ‘Coppers contacted you?’

  ‘Come to speak to Maggie,’ he said. ‘Right after her husband’s funeral, Esme Robinson done it.’

  ‘How did the coppers know?’ I said. ‘I mean, this did take place in her house, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yus.’ Mr Darling looked around to make sure no one else could possibly be listening, then said, ‘Neighbours called the coppers in the evening because of the screaming. She must have drank it and then when the pain started . . .’

  ‘God almighty!’ Unfortunately I could only too easily imagine what she must have gone through. Tears came into my eyes, and although they remained unshed, I cried inside for this woman I had known only slightly and not even liked particularly well. Some things just transcend any bad feelings people might have towards each other. An untimely and painful suicide is one of them.

  ‘They tried to save her,’ Mr Darling said. ‘Took her over Whipps Cross by all accounts. But she was dead by the morning. Left a note for her sister in Canada and one for my old woman. The one to Maggie said that she, Esme, wants you to do her funeral.’

  ‘Oh God, what a thing to do. I . . .’ I was still shocked. She must have been, as Mrs Darling had predicted, unable to face existence without her husband. Without intimacy or even faithfulness on his part – if indeed Esme had known about what Neville did with prostitutes – she had nevertheless loved him and could not imagine a life without him.

  ‘Good money in it for you,’ Mr Darling continued. ‘Esme and her old man was not short of a bob or two.’

  He was unmoved, some would say callous. But the Darlings weren’t rich and he, poor bloke, had his own cross to bear. He wasn’t interested in ‘spirit’. I didn’t think he even probably had much notion of what spiritualism was about. And yet he had a houseful of spiritualists most evenings as far as I could tell. Cissy was in and out during the day too.

  ‘Maggie says if you could come over tomorrow morning to discuss arrangements, she’d be obliged,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, well . . .’ I didn’t need to look at the diary to see what I was doing the following morning. I had planned to go and see Mr Abrahams at Claybury. Now that would have to wait. ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘If you could let Mrs Darling know that I’ll be with her by nine. We, er, we must all do right by Mrs Robinson now. Like every living creature she deserves a decent burial.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And of course offer your wife and everyone concerned my sincerest condolences,’ I said.

  Mr Darling shrugged. ‘Bit of a funny one, Esme, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘Until her husband started coming along with her, I thought she was another old maid. Maggie picks up old maids. They’re usually interested in what lies beyond the veil.’

  He said it with a straight, miserable face. It made me wonder, for a moment, whether Mr Darling did in fact believe in his wife’s circle and seances. But he soon put me right on that.

  ‘Well, my dear old lady excepted, but who but silly spinsters or soppy irons like that Mr Watkins fella would believe in something as daft as spirits and angels playing their harps sat on clouds and all that nonsense?’ he said. Then he leaned forward and added conspiratorially, ‘If you ask me, all these single women want to be paired up and soon. Hysterical.’

  ‘Mr Darling,’ I said, ‘our young men are fighting.’ Now that the initial shock of Esme Robinson’s death had passed, I was starting to feel angry, as I often do in the wake of a suicide. I’ve no religious objections to it; I just feel sad and frustrated at the waste.

  ‘Oh, not the young girls!’ he said scornfully. ‘I mean it’s the old maids want to be paired up. Women our age. A bleeding nuisance, all of ’em!’

  To my way of thinking Mr Darling was being silly and prejudiced and I wasn’t having it. I let my anger, if in a rather limited form, have its way. ‘And who would you pair these women up with, Mr Darling?’ I said. ‘I assume, sir, you were in the forces in the First . . .’

  ‘Royal Navy,’ Mr Darling cut in sharply.

  ‘Then you know that women our age outnumber men to a vast degree,’ I said. ‘There’s no one for them to marry. I have a spinster sister myself. My younger sister has married and has children, but my older sister has always been single. It isn’t ideal, but there’s very little she or anyone else can do about it.’

  For a moment he sat in silence, not exactly ashamed of what he had said, but cowed nonetheless. Eventually he said, ‘Yus, well . . . Well, they should do normal things as hobbies like sewing and knitting, not flapping about hysterically all over the place!’

  I didn’t make the obvious comment about the fact that Mrs Darling’s sitters, spinsters included, paid for the privilege of attending her seances. He had to know that, and so as he left I said no more about it to him beyond reiterating that I’d see his wife in the morning. But he’d really annoyed me. Spinsters like Nancy, cousin Stella and strictly my Hannah too, together with widows like Doris, make up a big and very industrious part of the population. Doris I would say is probably the backbone of our firm; without her I would quickly get into a tizz with my appointments and everything. But people still shun single ladies over the age of thirty in a way they don’t do to blokes of the same vintage. People look at me a bit funny from time to time, but that isn’t because I’m single. I behave strangely and I look a bit different to most people and so I have come to expect and accept that. But spinsters are treated as unnatural and looked upon either as tarts or mad or queer. I thought again about Esme Robinson and wondered whether not just her grief but the way people see single women had informed what she had done so very painfully to herself.

  I looked at the diary for the following day to see if I had anything on in the afternoon. I didn’t, so I resolved to go up to Claybury after I’d visited Mrs Darling in the morning. Nan had, I noticed, put her appointment with her friend in the book just as Aggie had told her. It said, 2 o’clock, Alice, Abbey Lane. I smiled. Well, there was one spinster not either sewing or talking to the spirits, I thought. There was also one spinster with a job too. I had already decided that provided Nan was happy to work for the firm, I was happy to have her. She had certainly at least started to emerge from her shell in recent weeks.

  But then suddenly that thought turned sour. Nan had started to get out because her best friend, Dolly O’Dowd, had been stabbed, beaten and hacked to death. And now yet another of their friends had died very horribly too.

  That night the skies were clear again and so we had another visit from the Luftwaffe. Unusually for me, I was so tired I couldn’t even think about running away. Very occasionally this happens, and when it does, I usually take myself off up on to the roof over Aggie’s bedroom window. Seems barmy, I know, but my reasoning is that if a bomb should drop with my name on it, if I’m out in the open at least I will go quickly. On top of a roof I stand far less chance of being buried alive than I’d have in an Anderson or a public shelter. Mr Deeks the bank manager and his little group of fire-watchers on the roof of the bank next door are used to my doing this from time to time.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Hancock!’ I heard Mr Deeks call out just after the first bomb hit somewhere down North Woolwich way.

  ‘G-g-good evening, Mr Deeks.’

  He scratched his head underneath his tin hat and said, ‘Good lord, these wretched Nazis, eh?’

  ‘Y-yes,’ I said.

  By the light of the now mounting explosions as well as the beams of the searchligh
ts overhead, I saw him smile. His duty as a neighbour done, he then went off to be with his lads at the southern end of the rooftop. Normally I would have lain down and closed my eyes, but on this occasion I sat up and looked down into the street below. Without being able to see any details, I knew that no one would be walking the Barking Road now that a raid was in full swing. Not even dogs and cats, kept indoors since the beginning of the war, wandered at night now. One creature I did know that was out and about, however, was the rat. As our sewers collapse and we die, so they grow in numbers. Just as they did in the trenches, thriving on the filth that gets into every corner of our lives. On this night, however, it wasn’t just the rats that were down on the Barking Road. Amazingly there was a person down there too, and, although at first I couldn’t make out what the noise was, eventually I realised that this character was knocking on my shop door. As soon as there was a slight lessening of the noise from guns and aeroplanes and explosions I shouted down, ‘Who is it? What do you want?’

  Knowing my luck it was a warden or a copper who had spotted a slight chink of light at one of our windows. Aggie in particular can be a bit careless about turning off the gas when she goes down to the shelter. But no answer was forthcoming. I shuffled a little closer to the edge of the roof and yelled, ‘Oi!’

  As I did so, the person looked up just as a great explosion of red, orange and yellow illuminated the sky, the street and probably the whole manor. Somewhere, I reckoned just south of the East London Cemetery, blew apart in a hail of brick, wood, slate and flesh.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  But it wasn’t the explosion that shocked me. It was my visitor. Her face pale as the moon, her long blonde hair flowing down over her shoulders, rendered gold by the death and destruction of who knew how many others, there, large as life, was Fernanda Abrahams. Even though I had a terrible feeling afterwards that maybe I imagined the whole thing, my eyes most certainly met hers and I would have sworn at that moment she was real. But just in case I was dreaming the whole bloody thing, I closed my eyes for a moment, by which time Fernanda, or whatever I had seen down there, had gone.