Last Rights

by Barbara Nadel

  By the time I got back to the shop I’d made up my mind to be at the Serpentine at nine o’clock that night. Whatever she was or had involvement with, I couldn’t live with the idea of Sister Teresa going there alone to face someone who might do her harm. Also, I wanted to know what was going on for myself. I had an idea that whatever was going to happen in the park, whatever was going to be said, would have a bearing on a lot of the mysteries that had troubled me so far – maybe even Kevin’s death.

  It was already long gone dinner-time when the stable was ready to put the horses back into so I told Nan not to bother to heat up what she’d cooked for me. ‘I’m going out soon,’ I said.

  ‘Where?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve got a bit of business.’ I didn’t want to go into what I had planned with either the Duchess or the girls. I didn’t want them to worry.

  ‘Who with?’

  Part of being a bitter person, as I’ve observed it in Nan, is to be suspicious of everyone and everything. I know Aggie can be a bit like this too, but with Ag I always feel she’s looking out for me by doing it and not just trying to make me feel bad for being who I can’t help being. Nan’s persistence was needling me now and I wasn’t above showing it.

  When I first sighed and then didn’t bother to answer her, Nan said, ‘So will you be home for your tea?’

  ‘No,’ I said tetchily.

  ‘Oh, so if we have a raid tonight I’ll have to cope with Mum all alone, will I? Aggie’s out at that job of hers—’

  ‘I’ve been out before when a raid has started!’ I said. I was beginning to yell now, which is something I rarely do. ‘I was out the other night with the hearse and the horses, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Yes, I know, and don’t blaspheme! But it’s better if you’re home, Frank. You know Mum can’t make the stairs and it’s as much as I can do—’

  ‘If Francis needs to go out then that is what he must do.’

  We both turned to look at her, the Duchess, smiling, leaning on her stick in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘But, Mum . . .’

  ‘Nancy, if I know Francis is going to be out I can get down to the Anderson at my leisure.’

  ‘Yes, but you don’t want to be down there. It’s damp.’

  ‘I know.’ The Duchess moved painfully to the table and sat down on one of the hard chairs. ‘But if I take enough blankets and some warm tea, I will be all right. I know that you’re tired, Nancy, and I will try not to be a bother, but please don’t take it out on your brother. We all have our crosses to bear, especially Francis.’

  Nan put her head down while the Duchess raised her face to me. ‘Because Francis has things to do, haven’t you, Francis? Things you need to do.’

  ‘Yes, Duchess.’

  ‘I don’t know what they are but I imagine they have something to do with the death of that poor man Dooley,’ she said. ‘You don’t like it when death is unresolved, do you, Francis? Like your father, you’ll have no truck with lies – whoever is telling them. The dead deserve no less.’

  I didn’t answer. My mother nursed me for months when I came home from the Great War. She is the only one who even begins to understand me. Nan, put down yet again or so she must’ve felt, pulled a sour face, which prompted the Duchess to ask her to leave us alone for a minute.

  Once Nan had gone, she said to me, ‘You know that Agnes thinks you should leave all of this business to the police. She feels it is far more complicated than any of us imagines. She says you’re thinking about it far too much. More than is good for you.’

  I sighed. Aggie had probably been the one most shocked by how I’d been when I’d come home from the Great War. Before, I’d been her happy-go-lucky big brother – a bit cleverer than most on account of going to the grammar school, not bad-looking in my own way, spoiling my little sister rotten. When I first came home I was so thin nothing fitted me, my skin was the colour of ashes and I didn’t even open my mouth to say good morning. I was so frightened of what might fly out of me about the filth and the brutality of the killing – my own included. I kept and keep schtum with difficulty. I’m not good now, I never will be, but back then I was a lunatic, and it was only having to run the business because Dad died that saved me. Aggie says that I came back from the dead at that point, and in a way she’s right. But whether I’m working, talking to people or getting involved where maybe I shouldn’t, I’m still me inside and that’s the thing that runs in a raid and hears voices that gibber and jabber in my skull. Like it or not, that’s the real me – now.

  ‘I’ll be all right, Duchess.’ I took one of her poor little hands in mine and squeezed it gently.

  ‘Well, as long as you will be, Francis,’ she said. ‘You’re very important to a lot of people. Not the least of which to that Miss Jacobs. Very good with young Velma she was the night she came here, very good. Such a nice friend for you to have, Francis.’

  Even at forty-seven a bloke can be embarrassed in front of his mother. I felt my face get hot even if it didn’t change colour. Later I wondered whether Aggie had confided what she obviously knew about Hannah to the Duchess, but I decided she probably hadn’t. The last thing Ag is is disloyal, even if her brother is going with a prostitute. No, the Duchess must have worked out we were more than friends all on her own. Furthermore, she must’ve approved too – somehow. After all, Hannah had told everyone in the shelter she was a Jew, so it wasn’t like the Duchess didn’t know that, if nothing else.

  I took note of the time when I left; it was four. After the morning fog, we now had rain and a sky full of dark grey clouds. By half past six it’d be pitch, especially with the blackout in force. There are a lot of stories about cars and buses coming to grief in the blackout, falling into bomb craters and suchlike, so I should’ve hopped on a bus as soon as I could to get up West. But, much as I felt I didn’t have time, I did want someone to know where I was going.

  Hannah had just got in from doing a bit of shopping when I fetched up at her place. As she opened the door of her room, the coldness of the damp in the walls hit me like a wet slap in the chops. Dot, who lives directly down below Hannah’s room, is very mean with coal and even before the war was known to almost kill herself with cold every winter. So even if Hannah does keep her fire up it’s a losing battle in that icy house. On this occasion, however, and in spite of Hannah’s natural generosity, there was to be little relief from the ever present damp.

  ‘I ain’t got no coal,’ she said, pointing to an empty bucket beside her tiny grate, ‘but there’s newspaper and wood here, for all the good they’ll do.’

  She gave me one of the bags she’d been carrying, which contained a couple of copies of the Daily Sketch and quite a few sticks that looked as if they’d once been painted. It’s a big thing to be caught looting, even rubbish like this from bombed-out houses. But how a lot of people would keep warm without such sticks and splinters doesn’t bear thinking about.

  As I made up the fire, she put away the couple of tins of fish and the loaf she’d bought. Once the fire had caught I told Hannah what I intended to do.

  ‘You shouldn’t be going off doing this on your own, Mr H,’ Hannah said, once she’d lit herself a fag and sat down at her table. ‘Stumbling about in the blackout on your own, anything could happen. There’s all sorts about up West. You’re not exactly, begging your pardon, a fighting man, are you? You could get beat up or—’

  ‘I handled the Dooleys, sort of,’ I said. ‘It won’t happen. Lightning doesn’t strike twice.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ she said. ‘And, anyway, there could be a raid. You could fall over and hurt yourself in the blackout. This person the nun is meeting could be anyone . . .’

  ‘Yes, yes, but what can I do?’ I said. ‘That nun could be in danger. And I want to know what’s going on too. For my own satisfaction.’

  Hannah gave me one of her piercing looks. ‘So it’s not just finding out who killed Kevin Dooley, then?’

  ‘No. Not just that. Since he d
ied, so many other strange things have happened. I want answers and if there’s any chance I’ll get some I have to take it.’ I put my head down then as if I was ashamed of this admission. But I wasn’t. If I was sorry for anything it was that I knew, or rather hoped, that Hannah would worry.

  ‘I s’pose I can’t stop you?’ Hannah said, after a pause.

  ‘No.’

  She sighed, and then, with a flick of her head towards the fire, she said, ‘Well, damp that bleeder down a bit and I’ll come with you. Paper and wood don’t last like coal anyway.’

  ‘No, Hannah,’ I said.

  She pointed at me straight in the face. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘All the pubs up West are full of young tarts on the lookout for new customers. So if you think I’m going to let you go up there on your own you’ve another think coming!’

  ‘But I thought I was only a customer?’ I said, using her own hurtful words to me – hopefully to stop her coming along.

  But Hannah, turned away from me now, put on her hat and coat and said, ‘You know you’re more than that, Francis Hancock.’

  I started to speak, but she silenced me with a look. And, stern though it was, I felt that it signalled an end of sorts to our falling out over her sad past.

  Journeys on blacked-out buses can be strange, creepy affairs. Unless you get a jolly crowd on board they can seem endless. Inside, the little blue blackout lights give a weird, washed-out tinge to the gloom, which can give you a headache after a bit. While outside there’s nothing but blackness, sometimes you can see the occasional shape, a darker black against the grey or black sky. Up front, the bus driver is squinting into the murk, praying that every corner he turns isn’t going to be his, and our, last. I looked across at the conductor once; he just scowled back, his eyes shifty with the strain of it all. It made me wonder where Doris’s Alfie gets all his good humour from.

  Not that I was doing much to lighten the mood. Like almost all our fellow passengers, I wasn’t inclined to talk. Poor Hannah tried to bring me out a few times with chatter about the wireless, ITMA mainly, and pictures she was keen to go and see, but I couldn’t even pretend to be interested in much. Now, looking back, I suppose what we call the undertaker’s instinct, that Third Eye, must have been working for me. I had such a dread on me it was almost as if a raid was happening without any noise. Of course, even though I was, hopefully, going to see who Sister Teresa was meeting, that posed no real threat to me personally. Whatever happened, Hannah and I could just walk away. But there was this bad feeling I had in spite of that. Drifting slowly through the ever-darkening streets, our bus full of pale, silent people was, I felt at the time, like some sort of carriage of the damned. Each one of us looked like he had an unquiet ghost on his shoulder. But, then, given such terrible times as these perhaps most of us do.

  Hannah and I eventually got off the bus in Regent Street outside Swan and Edgar’s at just gone seven thirty. Because Piccadilly was blocked off we had to walk up Regent Street, west along Oxford Street, then either up on the Bayswater Road to enter the park by the north or to the east from Park Lane. It isn’t far by anybody’s standards, but if you are, well, blind basically, it isn’t easy. As we got off the bus I took Hannah’s arm and walked on the road side of the pavement, in case a bus or a car should get too close to the kerb. If you’re unfortunate you can get knocked down on the pavement these days. But even if you don’t get knocked down you can get splashed with muck from the gutters and I didn’t want that happening to Hannah.

  Although, of course, God knows, I’ve been out in the blackout before, I’d never been out in it in the West End. Down our way, unless there’s a raid on, there are people around, going about their business, kids mucking around in the streets, men going out to their locals, women sitting on their front steps talking about their kids, their lack of money and their aches and pains. Up West, well, it was difficult to tell whether there were more or fewer people on the streets on account of them all being so quiet. Of course, they weren’t really silent, but they talked in more muted voices than the folks back home, the clacking of the women’s high-heeled shoes all but drowning out their speech.

  At the end of Oxford Street we somehow managed to get round Marble Arch without being knocked down by either a car or a bus. Then, on the Bayswater Road, we tried to enter the park by the first gate we came to which, I reckoned, had to be the one just north-west of Speaker’s Corner. But it was padlocked up, which, if I’d had any sense, I would’ve known would happen. It was, by now, as dark as night can get.

  I was about to admit defeat and apologise to Hannah for even thinking about doing this mad thing when she took my hand in hers and said, ‘Follow me.’

  Walking quickly, we went onto Park Lane and then over to Speaker’s Corner itself, which was, incredibly, open to both the park and Park Lane and got in through there. It was dead easy.

  ‘How did you know about that?’ I asked Hannah, once we were inside. I was, I admit, impressed by what seemed to be her local knowledge.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said, as she pushed on in front of me into the darkness of the park.

  And it was very, very dark. I, of course, had come quite unprepared for what I was intending. But Hannah, seemingly ready yet again, had not. She put her hand in her pocket, took out a little torch and pointed it down at her watch. It was quarter past eight.

  ‘I think the Serpentine must be over that way,’ I said, pointing straight ahead of me, into what looked like a great black field.

  ‘Well, don’t make a dash for it yet.’ Hannah put a restraining hand on my arm. ‘There’s trenches been dug in the parks.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ She was right. Back at the beginning of this lot the Government had decided that trench shelters in the parks were a good idea. They could accommodate a lot of people and they were cheap. They also have a tendency to collapse in wet weather, which, if only these Government types had bothered to ask, any old soldier would’ve known. Now confronted, possibly, with trenches again, I felt my knees start to knock and my breathing came harder and faster than it usually does.

  ‘All right,’ I said, after I’d had a minute or two to compose myself. ‘Give us the torch. Let’s move on very slowly.’

  With no light, save the occasional quick flash from the torch, we picked our way carefully as if walking on eggs.

  ‘Not a soul about, is there?’ I whispered to Hannah.

  I heard her laugh. ‘Don’t be took in, Mr H,’ she said. ‘This place is heaving.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A lot of girls work in the parks,’ Hannah whispered. ‘Believe me, Mr H, if you shake a load of bushes round here at night you’ll as often as not find a girl young enough to be your daughter with one or more gentlemen old enough to be your father!’

  ‘So is that why Speaker’s Corner—’

  ‘Can’t expect gentlemen to climb over gates, can you?’ Hannah said.

  ‘No. Oh, right.’ I said. Well, it made sense. If nothing else, the park had to be too big for coppers and other irritations to those ‘courting’. ‘So is that how you knew to get in through Speaker’s Corner?’

  ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,’ Hannah said.

  ‘Oh.’

  As we got closer to where I reckoned the Serpentine had to be, I started to sense rather than see movement up ahead. It would have been a bloody miracle if it’d been Sister Teresa and whoever it was she was meeting, but it wasn’t them. It was a group of coppers.

  As the tallest of the coppers shone his torch up into my face I could see that behind them, between them and the waterway, was a huge roll of barbed wire. Squinting, I put Hannah’s little torch into my pocket.

  ‘What’s all this, then?’ he said, as he turned his light from me to Hannah and back again.

  As frequently happens in situations like this I lost my speech. ‘I . . . I . . .’

  ‘Do you know this is a restricted area, sir?’

  ‘Er . . .’ This was bad. You can
get into all sorts of bother if you stray across into military areas now. Looking about as different from a German as a person can get is no defence either.

  ‘Identity cards, please.’

  Hannah took hers out of her gas-mask box, which she quite often uses as a handbag. I eventually found mine, after a lot of fumbling, at the back of my wallet.

  The copper looked at the cards in silence, then passed them over to one of his fellows, who looked, to me, very young.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, Mr Hancock,’ the youngster said, ‘and you, Miss.’

  ‘Mmm . . . er . . .’

  ‘Do you want to tell us what you’re doing in a restricted area? Either of you.’

  ‘Well, it’s like this . . .’ I heard Hannah begin. Then I listened in silence. We were, apparently, star-crossed lovers – a Jew and a Christian whose mother came, as Hannah put it, ‘from the Orient’. ‘He’s the colour of cardboard if you look at him in the light,’ she said. We’d come ‘up West’ where nobody knew us so we could walk and talk as normal folk without fear or favour. Coming into the park for a ‘cuddle’, she said, had been our way of rounding off our day out. After all, we were, despite our differences, practically engaged. There wasn’t anything immoral going on, she assured them.

  In the silence that followed I wondered how long it would take me to lose what was left of my mind behind a door with a lock. Of course, now things half heard from customers, the wireless and on the street came back to me. There was a munitions dump under the Serpentine. Never mind about Hannah’s bloody trenches, here we had weapons, barbed wire and coppers. They were, I knew it, going to think that we were spies.