‘Was this area badly damaged?’
‘Not half as bad as some parts. The street next to my mother’s had eight houses wiped out.’
‘How awful,’ Jean said.
‘Well, most of them were grimy old slums put up while old Vicky’s Albert was still breathing. Macmillan ought to knock the rest down and finish what the Germans started.’
‘Did you grow up round here?’ she said, not really knowing what she meant by round here, other than perhaps a vague sense of east London.
‘Mother’s lived in the same place all her life. What about you and, what did you say your brother’s name was?’
‘Harry. We grew up in Norfolk.’
Charlie nodded but said nothing. They reached a junction and Charlie beeped his horn to let people know he was there, not that he could see anyone. As they turned onto the next road, he grew more confident and gently increased the speed.
‘How long have Phyllis and your brother been married?’
‘Just over a year.’
Charlie swerved the van to avoid a parked car.
‘And they live together?’
‘Well, of course they do.’
‘And they were at the op-e-ra?’
‘Yes,’ Jean answered, annoyed by Charlie’s apparent disbelief.
He went quiet for a minute.
‘I thought it was just snooty people who liked to go to the opera.’
Jean didn’t really know how to answer him. She felt he was having a dig at her. Perhaps she did sound out of place but she did not like the idea that she might come across as snooty.
‘Well, I suppose it tends to be a rather select group.’
‘I’m only teasing. I know the only thing that really matters in this world is money.’
‘Money?’
‘Yeah, if I had money I’d spend it on nice things. Get myself a new car. Nice house. Our whole street has damp in the walls. It’s hell in the winter. The air never gets dry and you feel it in your chest. You want a smoke?’
He reached for a box of cigarettes and offered her one. Jean didn’t really feel like it but took one nevertheless, trying to win his confidence.
‘And so you’re unmarried?’ he said, after a few long pulls on his cigarette.
‘Sorry?’
‘Well, you go by the name of Clarke.’
‘Yes, I’m unmarried,’ Jean said.
‘I hope you find her.’
‘It’s just I don’t know where she’d go. And why would she fib about working in the café?’
‘She’s probably with a friend.’
Charlie pulled sharply as the road suddenly turned to the left.
‘Well I don’t know her friends.’
‘And your brother?’
‘He lives in Chalk Farm.’
‘Elma employs all sorts in that café. People move on quickly.’
They reached another corner. As Charlie turned the van Jean became aware of a smell. It was a strange high-pitched sort of scent. She looked over her shoulder into the darkness of the van but she couldn’t see anything.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. I just thought I could smell something.’
‘I’ve got some meat in the back.’
‘Meat?’
‘Pork from Smithfield’s. They slaughtered a load of them this morning, but they can’t shift ‘em in this weather. That’s why I couldn’t leave the van. I need to get it home, cut up and salted.’
As soon as he told her about the meat it was all she could smell. There was something slimy about the scent, as if the meat were sweating, despite the fact it was freezing. It made her think of the pigeon gutted on the road. She tried to focus on the light from the headlamps but the sight of the smog only made her feel worse and so she looked down at her lap, pushing her hands against her temples. Charlie turned another corner, more sharply than he had with the others and she felt her stomach lurch.
‘Pull over,’ she said.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m going to be sick.’
He turned and looked at her.
‘You’re all right.’
‘I’m not. Please.’
‘Pull down the window,’ he said, leaning over to reach for the handle. His hand scrabbled wildly in the dark and she shifted out of the way. A light dazzled her and she looked up.
‘Look out,’ she cried, knowing that it was already too late, as a car took shape in front of them.
Charlie swerved but instead of putting his foot on the brake he seemed to speed up. The van kept going until it met the side of a parked car. There was a sudden jolt, an awful prolonged whine of folding metal, and finally silence.
FOUR
Harry had no idea how far he had run, but he kept going. Now and then he would hear a whistle and presumed it was a way for the men who were after him to communicate with one another. Someone was still close at hand, perhaps thirty feet away, and pursuing him. He reached a junction and swung round to the right. Slowing down, he unhooked his shoes one at a time, held them under his arm and then ran again, his feet now almost soundless on the road. After a minute or so he moved to the kerb and stopped. Once more he turned and listened. There were two or three more whistles but this time they were farther off. He was wheezing heavily and tried to control his breathing and then continued to half walk half run along the pavement. Each time he came to a junction he turned in the opposite direction and only when he had made six or seven turns did he feel safe to stop.
He sat on the pavement and replaced his shoes. His face felt tingly, as did his hands, and he wondered if he might pass out. Consciously he tried to calm his breath but in doing so he became aware of a dull pain in his ribs on his right side. He slouched forward and ran his fingers along the bones, pushing gently here and there, and wondered if he’d fractured them in the struggle.
Slowly he got to his feet and tried to work out his bearings. He meandered in what he assumed was vaguely the right direction, but then he came to an abrupt halt. Where was he headed? Home? There was nowhere else to go, he supposed, but the thought did not make him happy. He began to walk again, looking down at his hands to check they were still there because the cold had worked its way through them. He did his best to wiggle them and get the blood going again but they remained obstinately unresponsive to his efforts. In fact his entire body felt ungainly and lumbering. His head too was mashed up, and he found it difficult to hold onto a train of thought; he would think about his dalliance with George and then the memory would dislocate and he would see the men attacking him but the two events felt as though they had happened on different nights. That he had been attacked at all was shocking enough but that it had come hot on the heels of his marital transgression with George unnerved him. What the hell had Phyllis got herself mixed up in? And what if they came looking for him? They had found out his real name from his ration card. It wouldn’t be too difficult to trace him. Better to go straight to the police and explain what had happened and give them the men’s names. But then he wondered if the police would talk to the bartender, and if they did would he remember that Harry had been with George? And what did happen to George? Harry contemplated going back, but then he thought about the police again and he became too scared.
Somehow he found his way to Liverpool Street station and while it was a relief to see a building he recognized, it released all the fear from what had happened to him. He stood and smoked two cigarettes, barely stopping for breath until he was half way through the second. His gaze wandered up to the roof which was, like everything else, cloaked in mist. Very quickly the cigarettes brought his mind into focus and his instinct for self preservation kicked in. There was no way he could go to the police; the very idea was absurd. He wanted to find Phyllis without having to get anyone else involved.
As he walked into the station his foot managed to catch a paving stone and he stumbled clumsily. He realized that he wasn’t sh
aking from the cold but from a horrible anxiety which had been working up inside of him for days and now jostled his limbs like he was overcome with a fever. This was something more than the shock of being assaulted. He needed to sit down. He looked around to check no-one was watching him and then made his way over to a bench. The greyness from outside had dribbled into the station and the air was clammy. The roof above him was covered in a sepia slick of grease, as though it had caught the stale breath of all who had passed under it. He wiped his brow and watched as dim figures shuffled on the edges of the concourse, too frightened to walk through the open expanse in the middle.
The various threads of his life had finally become entangled with one another, and now he was at a terrifying impasse. It was to be expected. If he had been a superstitious man he would have found solace in the circularity of fate, but, in truth, he could only blame himself. He might try to run away from a problem; indeed he had done so on many occasions, but he would still acknowledge it as an act of choice. How to resolve his current situation was now the predicament. He would have to deny that he had ever met George. That much was obvious to him.
He lit another cigarette and considered the reality of being a married man. It still felt odd to conceive of himself as a husband. The term felt ugly to him. There had been no real need. There were plenty of men who had remained quite comfortably as bachelors but that wasn’t an answer which brought him satisfaction any longer because he knew too well the profits of marriage. He was not like the Michaels or Joes of the world nor did he want to be; he had never been in any way certain of his inclinations in either direction and had certainly never been foolish enough to show his feelings outwardly. In truth, marriage was a useful hiding place with all its mundane anonymity, and perhaps worse, he enjoyed the power that came from being called a husband and the looks of warm approval it drew from other men. Even now he could feel strength in being married and to top it all he was to be a father. That was what separated him from people like George, who had nothing to tether their existence to, other than a few brief clandestine encounters with other men.
For the most part, his marriage to Phyllis brought him comfort and companionship but it also brought him desire, albeit in wavering degrees. Their wedding, carried out in a North London chapel with a handful of guests, was followed by a short three-day honeymoon in Eastbourne. They stayed in a large white-washed hotel along the seafront, and when they first arrived he had carried her up the stairs in his arms, which had made her laugh so loud and dirtily that the other guests had looked on aghast. The two of them spent most of the time in the bedroom, clawing at each other with such fierce need that they were convinced they had succeeded in making a happy match. But to Harry’s dismay, less than four months later Phyllis’s desire for him waned and while he had still been eager, her growing weariness and frustration with him meant that he too began to question the intensity of their relationship. His feelings for her were not boundless and needed reciprocation, just the same as anyone else. It was about that time that he started to notice other women and men too. Ever since he was in his teens he had felt it unnecessary to discriminate between the sexes. He might as easily be stirred by a man’s collar bone as by a woman’s cleavage. But now, as his eyes wandered, he also felt culpable for what was lost between Phyllis and him. For a while they went on in this vein, not admitting the change and pretending that companionship was enough but then one evening she presented him with the reason for her disillusionment.
*
‘That came for you a couple of weeks ago,’ Phyllis said, sitting with her legs sprawled over the side of an armchair in Harry’s living room.
Her eyes were directed to a piece of paper that she had placed on the mantelpiece above the fire. Harry removed his jacket and unfolded the paper.
‘What is it?’
‘Read it.’
He only had to look at the writing to know who had written it.
‘Why did you open a letter addressed to me?’
‘Do you want to explain the contents of it?’ she said.
‘I haven’t spoken to him in over a year. Do you understand? However it may read to you, I want you to know that.’
‘But you don’t deny that you and he were…?’
‘It wasn’t like that. Not in the way he describes. It was a far more casual thing from my point of view. He’s been hounding me for years.’
‘So you admit it,’ she said, her top lip lifting towards a sneer.
‘Look Phyllis, I am committed to you. That is what matters here. I haven’t been with anyone else since we’ve been married.’
She got up from her chair and went over to him and took the letter from his hand. As her eyes reread the contents her head shook in disbelief.
‘I can’t believe you kept this from me.’
‘But I haven’t. It just wasn’t something I wanted to dwell on. He knows I’m married.’
‘So what are you saying? You are over it?’
‘Over what?’
‘Because Michael and Joe warned me about you.’
‘Warned you? About what?’
‘That you were hiding something.’
‘Phyllis, stop it. I am not going to stand here and renounce everything I’ve ever done. This was a long time ago. And you had no right to read something that wasn’t addressed to you.’
‘I’m going out.’
She went to the hallway and started to put on her coat.
‘Can we speak about this sensibly?’
‘I can’t talk about this now.’
‘Please.’
‘It is not my job to sort you out, Harry. Stop leeching off everyone else. And sort that head of yours out once and for all.’
*
A surge of energy brought him to his feet. He had an obligation to find Phyllis; especially now that he knew those men were looking for her. He could only begin to guess at the reasons for her leaving, but he figured it must have been connected with her old life before she met him. There was probably money involved too. Things like this usually came down to money. His mind turned over what George had said about a woman being found dead. It set him on edge to think a woman could be so easily murdered and in such a horrid fashion. More than ever the city felt a callous and wretched place in which he was bumbling around like a fool.
Harry knew that he would have to send Jean home. It had been one of his missteps, something he’d done in a moment of desperation. It felt odd to think how far away his own life had traversed from that of his sister’s. The last year had been tough for her but she had been comfortable enough before that, living a life much more akin to that of their childhood. It was almost laughable to think they shared the same parents, when he considered the actions of his life, the places he’d been and the people he’d met set against her marrying Frank. The trouble was Jean never escaped from home and as a consequence she became, like mother, another planet in the orbit of his father’s world.
When Harry occasionally returned on brief sojourns from the war effort he was able to see his family more clearly than he had when living at home. What disturbed him most was his sister’s transformation into a meek, apathetic woman. At first she was tall and chatty, dominating the conversation between him and their mother, but by the time he returned in 1945 she would barely look him in the eye and he suspected she felt ashamed of the weight she had put on, although she was in no way fat. Her face, however, had lost its girlish beauty and her features were now awkward and this, combined with the way she dressed and held herself in a kind of permanent apology, made her seem more awkward still. She was reticent to speak and when she did, she would talk of such mundane subjects, the village gossip being the extent of her world view. His mother, too, was overcome by a malaise and indifference that further dismayed him. Harry knew that his father was at the centre of his family’s obliteration. The only thing his sister sought with any exigency was the approval of her father. She had always been Daddy’s favourite, but wh
at a terrible price she paid for it. To be married off to Frank; it was like being married off to an open coffin.
He decided to pick up a taxi and head home. Once he had seen his sister off, he would gather a few things and check himself into a hotel. It wasn’t safe to stay at the house now that they knew his name. If only he hadn’t taken his ration card. He thought about the name he had used instead: Freddie and it made his heart turn in on itself.
Someone was approaching. He could hear their footsteps. He stopped and listened but then the footsteps also stopped. For a moment he held his position, reaching out for a set of railings at the side of the street. No-one appeared so he began walking again. After a few steps he noticed the sound again. It was someone’s shoes scuffing along the pavement. Harry stopped again. Then a clanging noise rang out, like someone running a stick along the railings. Harry began to move quickly but the clanging grew louder and faster too. Whoever it was, they were close now, within a few feet of him. Harry decided to confront them. He faced the direction of the sound and waited. The noise continued, almost deafening now, and he thought he could see a silhouette emerging from the smog, but then the sound ceased and no-one appeared. His heart was thumping. He waited but still no-one came. Then he felt a breath on his neck. Slowly he turned and there a couple of feet from him stood a man in what appeared to be full army clothes. It was difficult to see him as he wore a hat and had a hand up to his face.
‘Hello.’
The figure did not move and Harry was too frightened to move forward.
‘Hello, can I help you?’
‘It’s going to be a busy one.’
It was a man’s voice.
‘I’m sorry?’ Harry asked.
‘They’ll be a lot of accidents tonight.’
‘I suppose there might be with this terrible weather.’
‘Shouldn’t be out on the road in this. Should stay in and keep warm if I were you.’
There was something about the man’s voice that stopped Harry from walking on.
The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1) Page 6
