No Hearts, No Roses

by Colin Murray

  I smiled back. ‘I feel a little better,’ I said. ‘The aspirin must have helped.’

  She looked tired. Which wasn’t surprising. She’d had a hard day. She also seemed to have lost most of the perkiness and resilience she’d shown earlier. She was back to the distant, fragile creature she usually showed the world.

  Some noise came from the front of the house – a door opening, and some people shuffling and stomping along the hall towards the kitchen – and I lost what perkiness and resilience I’d regained in the last fifteen or twenty minutes too when Jenkins entered.

  ‘Don’t bother to get up. We’d only have to force you back down,’ he said.

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone grin wolfishly before, but I swear he did, showing big, yellow teeth, as Ray and Don the driver came into the room, followed by Alfred. Alfred didn’t grin, and neither did a pale, sick-looking Jan. Then the bulk of the Bermondsey Battler filled the doorway before he shuffled sheepishly into the kitchen. His amiable mug offered a little respite from the narrow-eyed and mean looks of the others. Dr Jameson – perfidious Cambridge in person – brought up the rear and gave a dismissive little shrug when he saw me staring the proverbial daggers at him.

  Beverley Beaumont sobbed quietly.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  In spite of Jenkins’ instruction to stay put, I did get up. Well, I attempted to. The chair legs rasped against the wooden floor as I struggled to move away from the table. But my legs wobbled and the sudden movement left me dizzy and seeing the little pinpoints of bright, white light that are so often described as stars. The room started to spin alarmingly, and I swayed and staggered back.

  For all his bulk, Bert moved surprisingly quickly and, for all his strength, he forced me back into the chair very gently.

  ‘Sorry, Tone,’ he said, ‘but you was told to stay put.’ He leaned on me, a big hand on each shoulder, to emphasize the point.

  ‘It’s all right, Bert,’ I said, recovering a little. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

  A wireless was playing somewhere in the house. The warm, soft sound drifted into the kitchen. I imagined Miss Hardiman sitting in an old, comfortable armchair, her knitting to hand, the gentle yellow glow from the illuminated panel of the dark-wood wireless spilling on to her already sallow face. After all, Friday Night Is Music Night, I thought. The pleasant, distant sound of normality was unsettling.

  Miss Beaumont had stopped blubbing and was now staring miserably at the table-top, although I doubted her thoughts were on the whorls and scars of the old wood. Bert’s hands were heavy on my shoulders and became heavier as I leaned across to place my hand reassuringly on hers. I patted the back of one pale, slender finger and then sat up, in spite of Bert, and looked at the men arranged aggressively around the doorway.

  Confidence is everything, Robert whispered to me once.

  I thought I’d give it a go.

  ‘So,’ I said brightly, ‘anyone heard the football scores? How did Orient get on?’

  ‘No one’s heard the football scores, Mr Gérard,’ Jenkins said softly. ‘We’ve been chasing you over half of Cambridgeshire. Remember?’

  ‘Funnily enough,’ I said, ‘I do. You tend not to forget people shooting at you. Or cracking your skull.’ I paused. ‘Do you, Jan?’

  Jenkins coughed and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘Mr Gérard,’ he said slowly, ‘there is nothing, absolutely nothing, stopping Alfred from taking you into the garden and –’ he paused – ‘disposing of you for good.’ He paused again. ‘Except my good nature. Please don’t take advantage of that.’

  I took the hint and shut up. Robert had also told me that sometimes confidence isn’t confidence at all, but foolhardiness, and that most men can recognize the difference.

  Bert took his hands off my shoulders, moved away from the table and joined the others by the door.

  Surprisingly, it was Jameson who took a step forward and started to speak. The quiet, dry rasp of his voice carried a certain authority but no reassurance. ‘All Jenkins wants to know is where to find Jonathan, and he thinks that Miss Beaumont can tell him where he is.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ Alfred said. ‘Now we’ll have to hurt Mr Gérard.’

  There wasn’t any hint of reluctance or regret in his voice and, as he took a couple of steps towards me, I braced myself. But he stopped and snapped his fingers.

  ‘Although, come to think of it, hurting Tony here might well give me some pleasure, but it isn’t going to get us anywhere, is it?’ he said. Still looking at her, he reached out his uninjured arm and patted me on the head. ‘I ought to warn you,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t ordinarily hurt a woman, but I’m willing to make an exception in your case, and I am very, very good at hurting people.’

  To prove the point, he moved his hand from the back of my head and punched me sharply on the bruising on my head. It wasn’t a hard blow, just a vicious one, and the pain was excruciating. The swelling split and blood trickled down my face. He patted the back of my head again.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘what have you got to say, Beverley? Where’s little Jon?’

  Her reply was so soft even I didn’t hear it.

  ‘What was that, Beverley? Speak up,’ Alfred said, leaning towards her and cupping his hand theatrically to his ear.

  She looked up at him, her chin defiantly thrust forward.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said very slowly and clearly.

  I was ready for the blow this time, but it didn’t hurt any less and the trickle of blood became a torrent. I reached for the flannel that still lay in the little enamel bowl and held it to my head, to staunch the flow.

  There was icy anger flowing now too. I wasn’t about to allow him another free hit. And I certainly wasn’t going to let him start on Beverley Beaumont. ‘You ought to step back a little, Alfred,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to bleed on you.’

  He patted my head again. ‘Still the smart Alec, eh?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘still the smart Alec.’

  I leaned forward and slumped on the kitchen table, and his arm slipped from my head on to the back of the chair. I sniffed and then took a deep breath. No matter how bad I felt, it was now or never.

  I threw my full weight back against his hand, trapping it between my shoulder and the chair. My momentum meant that all three of us – me, Alfred and the chair – went flying backwards in a great jumble and landed on the kitchen floor. A sharp, sickening snap suggested that a bone in Alfred’s arm had broken, and his shrill scream confirmed it.

  I was on top of the heap and rolled off as quickly as I could and stood up. ‘I told you stand back,’ I said, panting slightly, feeling decidedly wobbly and giddy again but all the better for having taken him out. ‘Now you’ve got blood all over you.’

  His face was twisted and deeply lined with pain, his lips pulled back from his uneven teeth, his eyes tightly shut, and he clutched his arm, but, to his credit, he wasn’t whimpering. It must have hurt like a bastard, as Bernie would have said. My head hurt like a bastard too so I wasn’t about to waste any sympathy on him.

  Ray and Don the driver were looking around uneasily, each of them waiting for the other one to make a move. Without a lead from Alfred, they really weren’t very professional – actually, they weren’t very professional even with a lead from Alfred – but I remembered that Don had been waving a gun around in the field. He probably still had it.

  Jan looked as if the bash on the head had rendered him incapable of thought, let alone action. He even took step backwards and then stood still, looking pale and wan.

  Jenkins also took a step back – a big one – and looked as if he was about to run for it. Jameson must have been standing behind him because I couldn’t see him.

  Bert sniffed and shuffled around with a puzzled smile on his phizog. He was the only one of them who looked ready for a ruck.

  In fact, the least likely person made the first move. Beverley Beaumont suddenly sto
od up, holding the Luger in her trembling hand. She was a little bundle of contradictions: crying one minute, quicker on the draw than Audie Murphy the next. Admittedly, the gun waved like the branch of a tree in a gale, but it looked lethal enough.

  And only two of us in the room knew that the magazine was empty.

  ‘Give me the gun, Miss Beaumont,’ I said. ‘I know you know how to use it. They don’t. But they know I shoot straight.’

  I slid over to her, crab-style, and held out my hand. The gun was warm, and I remembered that she’d tucked it into her skirt, next to her body. It was another odd intimacy that had meaning for me but probably none for her.

  An old Afghan proverb says that two men are frightened of an empty rifle – the man facing it and the man holding it. I can certainly vouch for the truth of the last part and dearly hoped that the wisdom of the Afghans held good for the other bit as well.

  We stood there in relative silence for a few seconds, me covering them with the gun, feeling like I was slightly less than half in control. Then it went wrong.

  It was, of course, Bert who came towards me. He knew I wouldn’t shoot him. And he was right. I wasn’t about to damage the amiable old boy.

  ‘Stand back, Bert,’ I said. ‘I mean it.’ But he knew I didn’t and kept on coming.

  As soon as he was close enough that his big body was shielding them, Ray and Don both rushed at me.

  I didn’t have much of a chance and went down by the sink under a swirl of weak and ineffectual blows. I managed to land a few of my own though and, remembering at least one rule of unarmed combat, fought dirty.

  Don gasped and pulled back when he realized he was going to have bruised goolies for a few weeks.

  Fortunately, Bert remembered that we’d broken bread together – well, I’d bought him a bacon butty when we’d stopped on the road – and so he didn’t hit me. But he did reach down and pin my arms to my side. He was strong and I wasn’t and, after a futile struggle, I just gave up and faded into semi-consciousness again.

  Ray continued to pummel me for a few more seconds until Bert told him to lay off.

  We were all panting, Don was groaning, Jenkins was talking loudly and Beverley Beaumont was inhabiting her less decisive self, emitting little high-pitched shrieks.

  I was dazed, my head ached badly and all I wanted to do was close my eyes.

  I did and must have half slipped out of consciousness for a while because I was only dimly aware of something else going on as well.

  Four or five burly policemen, under the guidance of two blokes I knew I’d seen somewhere before, were feeling collars and fastening handcuffs, but they weren’t feeling my collar or measuring me for the bracelets. For which small mercy, much relief.

  I was so out of it that I didn’t even feel confused. The hubbub in the kitchen was considerable as Bert, in particular, added ‘resisting arrest’ to whatever charges he was already facing but, somehow, I lay there and no one trod on me and all seemed right with the world. Except for the headache, of course.

  Then Miss Beaumont was kneeling next to me asking if I was all right. And so was one of the blokes I recognized. The name John floated to the surface of my groggy mind.

  I gave them my most beatific smile. ‘Aren’t English policemen wonderful?’ I said.

  The low murmur of quiet conversation wafted around the stuffy interior of the car. My body was aching as much as my head as we drove slowly along a straight road in the centre of a town I assumed was Cambridge. Someone said something about Downing College. Neoclassical, they added, whatever that meant. I turned my head slightly and saw, very briefly, a gracious group of white buildings set back from the road.

  Beverley Beaumont was sitting on my left, occasionally offering a comment to someone in the front. Moving hurt, so I remained slumped down and didn’t strain to see who it was.

  John had force-fed me more aspirin back in Jenkins’ kitchen and then had bathed my face and bandaged my head.

  Miss Hardiman hadn’t reappeared, and I assumed she’d stayed in her room, listening to the wireless, her knitting needles clacking away, while her boss and his associates were invited to enjoy the hospitality of the local nick.

  One of the policemen had taken a brief statement from Miss Beaumont but, for some inexplicable reason, hadn’t insisted that we both accompany him to the station to lay charges. Instead, he’d left us with John, who was now driving us through Cambridge.

  But it wasn’t John Miss Beaumont was talking to.

  The front-seat passenger turned a little to his right and the lights of a car coming towards us lit up his shadowed face for a split second.

  I considered opening the door and jumping out, but thought better of it. I was in no shape for daring and damaging escapes from moving cars. The body was bruised enough.

  I tried to make sense of it. Jameson had dropped me in it twice – first with Robert and now with Jenkins – and yet here he was, playing the good guy. Surely he wasn’t planning to drop me in it again. There weren’t that many wolves left for him to throw me to. Unless Les was on the warpath about his Rolls.

  There was Inspector Rose, of course, but I was already in enough trouble with him. Jameson couldn’t make that situation any worse. Size ten boots were probably already beating a path to my (well, Jerry’s) door. Oh well, in the words of the old song, what can’t be cured, has to be endured. I’d worry about the size tens tomorrow.

  The car stopped outside an unprepossessing little house in the middle of a terrace. We all climbed out, John gallantly racing around to open the door for Miss Beaumont. I had to stumble out unaided.

  John took a key from Jameson, unlocked the door and then ushered us inside.

  I stood outside for a moment, staring at the open door and the rest of the unremarkable exterior. Newish sash-windows on the right-hand side of the door, two more above those, just like the houses on either side. Did Nazi bombs blow out windows in Cambridge? I didn’t have a clue.

  The night air was fresh and reviving after the warmth of the day and the stuffiness of the car – another elderly Wolseley, I couldn’t help but notice.

  I realized that I didn’t feel quite as groggy as I had every right to expect. Either the aspirin were working or the bash on the head wasn’t as serious as it might have been.

  For a moment, I wondered whether there was any chance of making a break for it.

  John looked young and fit, and I knew he carried a firearm, and he still stood by the door, waiting patiently for me to follow the others. I decided that his courtesy and patience merited a degree of trust and, anyway, he could probably outrun me, so I entered the little house, smiling at him as I passed.

  A breathy baritone sax floated around a mellow trumpet that lingered lovingly on ‘My Funny Valentine’ – the first music I’d heard in my head since the thump. I was rapidly returning to normal. The bitter-sweet melancholy was more Jerry’s taste than mine, but I liked it. Jerry had beamed delightedly when I’d asked him to play it again. There was something of the evangelical about him when it came to modern jazz.

  There was an open door to my right, and Jameson stood just inside it. I could hear Beverley Beaumont talking about pictures to him. He didn’t respond as she gushed over Rear Window and told him that he really had to see it. John closed the front door and waited, ever patient, for me to join Jameson and Miss Beaumont.

  Jameson seemed to have only the one hat. I remembered the battered trilby from our encounter on Tuesday night. He took it off and threw it on to an uncomfortable-looking couch that was covered with books and papers.

  ‘Sorry about the mess,’ he said, ‘but I was working in here last night.’

  Another, much more inviting, couch was already adorned by Miss Beaumont, her elegant legs crossed and her hands resting primly in her lap. She had that distant, cool look about her that suggested our earlier intimacy was over. I also thought I recognized the beginnings of what she called ‘the blues’. The excitement was over, and she was revert
ing to type. I wasn’t so sure that the excitement was completely over, and I remained standing.

  ‘So, Dr Jameson,’ I said, ‘what’s going on?’

  He turned to look at me, and the electric light from the lamps in the room shone on his red and scarred face.

  The room was comfortable and expensively scruffy, all old dark furniture, worn rugs and books. I’d never seen so many books outside Leyton library. Mrs Williams sometimes had a woman’s magazine or two lying about, and Jerry had a small bookcase of Penguins, but there must have been hundreds in here, and they all looked old.

  ‘Ah, Mr Gérard,’ Jameson said, ‘“A brave man struggling in the storms of fate.” First of all, I must apologize to you for earlier. It was not my intention to add to your discomfort. And, secondly, I must offer you and Miss Beaumont a little supper. It will only be cold cuts in the kitchen, I’m afraid, but I hope it will restore some of your joie de vivre. A drink? Miss Beaumont?’

  ‘Perhaps a small sherry,’ she said in her best Joan Greenwood voice.

  John moved quickly to a side table by the window where a tray with four decanters and some glasses shimmered and shone.

  ‘A whisky for me, John, please,’ Jameson said. ‘Mr Gérard?’

  I shook my head. ‘Some answers first,’ I said.

  If he could have, I’m sure he would have smiled, but his face remained expressionless, mask-like. ‘A man after Dean Swift’s heart,’ he said. ‘He was of the opinion that business should be done before dinner too. Ask away.’

  John did smile, and he poured the drinks, including one for himself.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘how is it that you’re not under arrest?’

  Jameson took his whisky from John, clutching it in both hands and raising it to his lips to sip a little. Then he sighed. ‘I thought it expedient to slip away during the fracas,’ he said. ‘In fact, I opened the door to the noble boys in blue, whom John and Andrew had summoned, and then I decided to absent myself in Miss Hardiman’s room. It didn’t seem to me that my presence in the kitchen would serve any useful purpose, and Miss Hardiman is an elderly lady who needed reassurance. I was able to give her that and keep out of the way.’ He looked at John, who nodded. ‘The thing is, Mr Gérard, and I know that we can rely on your discretion here – and, of course, on Miss Beaumont’s – but there is a cloud hanging over Cambridge in the light of recent . . .’ Jameson paused and considered what word to use. He finally decided on one. ‘Events. And the powers that be have taken a keen interest in any suspicious goings-on. They asked me to keep an eye open. The truth is that I have been keeping an eye open for some years. I move in academic and left-wing circles without attracting too much attention, in spite of . . .’ He made a clumsy gesture, the glass still in his hands, and indicated his face. ‘That’s how I know your friend, Monsieur Rieux . . .’