The Smog
by Timothy Allsop
Published by Amper & Sand
London, UK
© 2017
The Smog
© Timothy Allsop 2017
ISBN 9780995737907
All rights reserved in all media. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical (including but not limited to: the internet, photocopying, recoding or by any information storage and retrieval system), without prior permission in writing from the author and/or publisher.
The moral right of Timothy Allsop as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.
‘Come sable night, put on thy mourning stole’
John Ward
ONE
Jean Clarke had been advised not to travel. It was her second week out of hospital and the doctor was adamant that she was to spend a month recuperating, but as the doctor had nearly killed her, she was reluctant to take any notice of what he said. Besides, the matter was urgent. Her brother’s wife was missing.
It was early December and Jean was aboard the three thirty from Norwich to London. She sat motionless, her face turned to the window with her arms wrapped around her waist. Her eyes tracked a line of barren fields that stretched out to the horizon, the upturned soil frost-capped and so grotesquely bare that it seemed to her that nothing would ever grow in it again. Above, the thin winter light was already fading. The moon appeared low in the sky but the train shifted alongside a wood and a battalion of pines made a game of hiding it from her until it was lost behind a sheet of cloud. She welcomed the night and the chance it brought to consign the events of that day and the last several months to some other life on which she hoped the light was now forever put out.
Her stomach grumbled. She knew she should eat but she wasn’t hungry or rather she was hungry but felt like starving herself. Her belly made such a row that the two gentlemen in her carriage smirked at each other like schoolboys. She was not a pretty sort and men never granted her the same lenience they allowed those with fairer complexions, but still she objected to being so overtly ridiculed. Thankfully, one of the men alighted at Colchester and his comrade seemed to lose all confidence now that he was alone with her. He hid himself behind a copy of The Daily Telegraph and smoked a cigarette, dropping ash onto the floor, which he rubbed absentmindedly into the carpet with his left foot. As he turned the pages Jean tried to read the articles facing her, but the print was too small and she had to make do with looking at the photos instead. On one page she was greeted with an image of Elizabeth II that accompanied an editorial piece on the forthcoming coronation. The queen looked a lot like King George, but his handsomely delicate features were more formidable on Elizabeth’s round face. It was all right for her, Jean thought, scowling back at the image. Some women had all the luck.
Jean eyed her watch. It was approaching five, which meant her husband, Frank, would be at work for at least another hour. She had not phoned to inform him about where she was going, leaving him a short note on the kitchen counter along with instructions on how to find the half loaf of bread in the pantry. Perhaps he would be too worried to eat. Perhaps he would phone the police. Or the madhouse. The thought made her shudder and she glanced at the man opposite, who was falling asleep over his paper. Now that she looked at him properly she had to admit he wasn’t a bad looking chap, but he had still behaved like a child and she was sick to death with men behaving like children.
She removed a small hand mirror from her purse as quietly as she could. The frame and back of the mirror were decorated in a green herringbone pattern and the edges were chipped and worn from years of use; even the glass was slightly warped with age. Jean’s mother had given it to her as a present many years before and Jean kept it not so much out of sentiment but because she had never been interested in buying one for herself. She also liked the way this particular mirror showed only a tiny portion of her face.
The routine was always the same. Undoing the top button of her jacket, she began by smothering her cheeks with powder and fixing her brown hair, tucking it firmly behind her ears but knowing full well that it would work its way forward in no time at all. Then she let the mirror settle on her eyes because she quite liked her eyebrows, which curved across her forehead with a patrician’s sophistication. Her nose too was perfectly adequate, if a little sharp at its point, but then she came to the lower half of her face and to the travesty of her lips. To her they looked like the same childish lips she had when she was fifteen and she felt that lipstick only made them more obviously thin. She always left the mirror directed at her mouth for far too long as a kind of punishment to remind herself that she was unattractive and only when she had satisfied herself with that fact, did she snap the mirror shut.
The man opposite her awoke with a start and the sudden jolt through his body sent his paper cascading in several directions across the floor.
‘Damn thing,’ he said, his face colouring with embarrassment.
Jean watched as he struggled to piece the crumpled paper back in order, making no effort to help.
‘How much longer to London?’ he said, sharply.
Jean stared at him, wondering whether to answer him or not.
‘A half hour I should say.’
The man looked at her as though he were about to say something more but seeing the ring on her finger he turned his attention back to his paper. She looked down at her hand and pulled the ring free. She turned it between her fingers, feeling the hardness and smoothness of the metal. It would be easy enough to let it fall and roll into some dark recess under the chair but she could not bring herself to let go of it. In the end she dropped it into her purse and turned back to the window.
Liverpool Street station. People pushed and shoved their way along the platform. On either side of her, train engines hissed while their drivers stood by, pulling at their collars and seeping coal from every pore of their skin, their eyes bloodshot and their faces daft with tiredness. The air was drenched in the sour scent of oil and cigarettes but what really shook Jean was the noise. Above the chorus of people, a guard bellowed at passengers to hurry up before blowing hard on his whistle, the sound slurring into the whine of an engine breaking sharply on a nearby platform and over the general roar a quartet of paper boys screeched out the football scores while pitching their news into the arms of passersby. The sight of all these people made her uncertain of how to proceed and she stood and surveyed the dance of limbs before her with a renewed sense of her solitude. What a great symphonic body of sweat and purpose and what a vast empty heart she was at the centre of it all.
‘Over here Jean.’
It took her a moment to recognize the man weaving towards her. Tall and wiry, not much more than a scratch of a person, he was held together by a slim brown tie and tight-fitting suit. His hair was thinning at the temples and his pallid complexion made him look almost invisible, his only remarkable feature being a prominent nose. It was hard to believe this was her older brother, Harry. It had been a year since she last saw him and although he was only a few years older than herself, having just turned thirty-one, he could have easily passed for someone of nearer forty.
‘You needn’t have troubled yourself. I’m sure it’s nothing.’
His sullen tone and demeanour made her wonder whether she had made a terrible mistake in coming to his aid.
‘Hello Harry,’ she answered, pecking him lightly on the cheek.
He hugged her and she felt her shoulders stiffen.
‘Are you well enough to be travelling? Let me take your things. You look peaky.’
‘I look a whole sight better than you,’ she replied.
‘But really…’
‘I’m fine Harry. Help me with the bags if you like.’
They made their way through the crowds and into a taxi. Jean was eager to see something of the city, but it was almost impossible. The streets were enthroned in a sickly yellow fog. It conjured a feeling of being in a darkened quarter of Victorian London. As they crawled along she could just make out a policeman walking ahead of a bus, a flare in his hand, and leading the vehicle in a mournful pageant through the murk like a vast dying whale being laid to rest on a dark and empty seabed. Along the pavement to her left the shrouded silhouettes of couples caged inside heavy winter coats hurried along, perhaps on their way to a dance or to the flicks, some arm in arm but most with their hands balled deep inside their pockets.
‘The police have been no good at all,’ Harry said, throwing a copy of the Evening News onto her lap.
She picked it up and glanced down at the page where there was a small picture of a woman, cut away at the shoulders, and beneath it:
Mrs Phyllis Clarke, aged twenty-two, disappeared yesterday after she and her husband were parted at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre during a performance of ‘La Traviata’. The show was halted as a result of the appalling smog which has blanketed the entire city. Her husband, Mr Harry Clarke, is desperately concerned and has asked for anyone with information about her whereabouts to contact the police immediately. She is five feet three inches, of slim build with short curled blonde hair and at the time of her disappearance she was wearing a long mint green evening dress.
Jean’s eyes fixated on the thumb-sized photograph. The print quality was poor but even so Phyllis still radiated an oppressive beauty. Jean read the article a second time and could not help but suspect a hint of lust in the reporter’s description of Phyllis’s appearance.
‘I’m sure she’ll be all right,’ she said, but she knew Harry had good reason to be concerned.
She had her doubts about Harry’s wife even before they were married. On the two occasions she met Phyllis, the girl had been unable to look her straight in the eye and while Jean had, at first, put it down to the nerves of meeting the in-laws, she had since begun to consider that there was something more insistent and deliberately aggressive in her reserve. Any question Jean asked had been answered with barely more than a single-worded reply, and now that Jean thought about it she had only garnered the most rudimentary knowledge of Harry’s wife.
‘Her parents are both dead, aren’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is there any other family?’ Jean asked.
‘An aunt took her in. A widow that worked in a hosiery factory. But she was a terrible drinker and lost her job. From what Phyllis told me, she was lucky to get out of there in one piece.’
‘And then what? An orphanage?’
Harry nodded.
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere in the east end.’
‘How long was she there?’
‘Five or six years, I believe.’ He turned his face to the window. ‘And you can imagine what that was like.’
‘Indeed.’
Jean had never pursued the issue of Harry’s marriage because London and her brother’s life had seemed so removed from her own in Norfolk, but now the very fact of that distance made her consider more deeply the manner in which her brother lived. What did he and Phyllis do with themselves? What did they talk about? Where did they go of an evening? The trouble was that London afforded such an infinite number of possibilities that she was left feeling as though the man sitting next to her was a complete stranger. She tried not to blame herself. It was Harry who had made the decision to leave. As far as Jean was concerned, he should have made more of an effort to stay in touch, although perhaps she felt that way because she was resentful of his getting away or, more than that, perhaps she had absorbed her family’s disapproval of his leaving. Her father, especially, had taken his departure badly. When she thought of her brother she would instinctively think of the jovial ten-year-old but it was that image which made it difficult to conceive of him as he was now: an anxious, prematurely aged man who had married beneath him. In truth she wasn’t convinced that Harry was even capable of loving someone and, beyond a modest rise in social standing, she had no idea what Phyllis saw in him.
‘Why were you at the opera? I didn’t think it was your cup of tea,’ Jean said, as the taxicab lurched to miss a car coming from the other way.
‘I suggested we go and see this new Agatha Christie, but Phyllis was the one who suggested the opera. She said she’d never been.’
‘I don’t mean to be rude but she doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d appreciate it.’
Harry too, when he considered it, thought that it had been an odd choice to buy tickets for something that neither he nor his wife were particularly interested in but then he had become so used to doing something without questioning whether it was something he wanted to do.
‘She likes to dress up.’
‘What have the police said exactly?’
‘Very little. They wanted to know if she’d been ill, and I told them she was perfectly healthy. One of them gave me a peculiar look.’
‘Peculiar?’
‘I think he thinks that she’s absconded.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Run off with another fellow.’
‘Why would she do that? Do you know if she’s seeing someone else?’
‘No.’ He hesitated a moment. ‘We’ve been arguing a bit.’
Jean tried to get a better look at her brother, but the taxi was dark and he kept his face turned towards the window. He was keeping something from her.
‘Everyone argues Harry. That doesn’t mean she’s having an affair.’
‘Perhaps not. Thing is,’ he whispered, leaning in so the driver couldn’t hear, ‘I think she’s taken my wallet. I only noticed it at the police station when I gave a statement. She looked after my jacket while I was in the washroom.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t leave it at the theatre?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘A pick pocket?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘But you don’t have money troubles, do you?
‘No. Look, I just have this feeling she’s in trouble,’ he said, irritated.
The car gave another awful jolt as the taxi driver jammed his foot onto the brake pedal and Jean’s hand instinctively reached up to her waist. A wave of nausea passed through her body and it took a moment for her to catch her breath.
‘Be careful, will you,’ Harry snapped at the man.
Jean remembered that Harry had at one time been a very good driver. He learned to drive just before the war and was assigned to work on transport vehicles while serving in France but while he was there he was involved in a road accident from which he had clearly never recovered.
‘Talk me through what happened yesterday,’ Jean asked.
‘It was her birthday. I’d taken her for tea in the afternoon and then we followed it with a little shopping. The smog was already bad, so I told her we ought to head home sooner rather than later to make sure we had enough time to get dressed for the opera. She was worked up about something and wasn’t keen on going back but I was insistent because she’d bought this new dress especially. Well, she was in a mad dash to leave the house as quickly as possible and she’s not usually one to rush getting ready. I think she was worried we would be late because of the weather. We took the underground part of the way and then jumped on a bus headed east but the traffic was very congested. In the end we had to walk the last half a mile but we still made it with time to spare.’
The taxi made another swerve.
‘I told you to bloody mind yourself,’ Harry shouted at the driver.
‘So did she calm down when you reached the theatre?’ Jean asked.
‘A little, yes. W
e were accosted by an Italian fellow who tried to sell us his ticket for the show and started all this nonsense about how beautiful she was and how lucky I was. He was a spiv if ever I’ve seen one, but it cheered Phyllis up no end. He was right, of course. She looked stunning.’
‘I’m sure she did.’
‘It was about half way through the first act when the fog came in. Phyllis became agitated. We all did because in a matter of minutes we couldn’t see a bloody thing. The stage and even the audience completely disappeared. They stopped the show and the ushers told us to make our way to the exits. You can imagine the hullabaloo. I had a hold of Phyllis’s hand but people began to struggle at the end of the aisles. I lost my grip on her but the crowd kept pushing me forward.
Before I knew it I was through the foyer and outside on the street. I waited by the doors and I would have stayed there, but then I caught sight of a figure crossing the road and I was sure it was her. The dress looked exactly the same colour. I ran as fast as I could and caught up with her but when she turned round it was a different woman. I struggled to find my way back to the theatre. It was hard to think straight, what with the smog in my eyes and throat. When I did get back they were already closing up the theatre. The girl on the door told me I’d have to wait outside but I explained that my wife was missing and could I check the auditorium in case she’d been knocked to the ground. To give the girl her due, she did let me in and I felt my way along the rows at the front of the auditorium and walked along each of them but Phyllis wasn’t there. She had vanished. I went home but she wasn’t there either. I waited nearly two hours and then I phoned the police.’
The taxi pulled up.
‘Here we are,’ Harry said.
Harry’s home consisted of a set of rooms which occupied the basement and ground floor of a large house near Chalk Farm. It was the first time Jean had seen him set up in a house of his own. For several years after the war he played the part of an itinerant, shifting from one rented bedsit to another, but each time he moved he accumulated a few more books, a few more pieces of furniture and before long he had too many things. Then in 1949 their father died and both Jean and Harry inherited a little money. Harry bought the place in Chalk Farm, but Frank absorbed most of Jean’s income into his own and so Jean lived off her salary and an allowance from her husband. As she looked around at her brother’s property she began to feel angry with herself for having so easily parted with her inheritance.
The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1) Page 1
