Last Rights

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Oh, God help us!’ Sister Teresa said.

  ‘Don’t be such a prig!’ Opal snapped. ‘One does what one does to survive, as well you know. I had to get close to him to kill him. I was very good. He said so. He shut his eyes, as men do when they’re having sex, as Harold always did, and then I stabbed him.’

  ‘How did you know what Kevin liked and what he didn’t?’ I said. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘Oh, Daddy had found Pearl and Ruby for me some time ago. He is a solicitor, you know,’ Opal said, almost playfully. And then she added, with more menace than I can convey on mere paper, ‘But it was I who took the decision to free them at this time. The bombing was propitious. I couldn’t have my family subjected to violence. The things my sisters put up with! Not that I told Daddy about it until it was over.’ She laughed. ‘And you did your bit too, Mr Hancock. Daddy had searched for Amber for some time, but with no success. You know that those nuns lied to him when he asked them about her? But you . . .’

  ‘I only left Nazareth House for Pearl,’ the nun said bitterly. ‘Because I thought she was in trouble.’

  ‘You’re a good Reynolds girl, then, aren’t you?’ Opal said, still smiling.

  The car fell silent then. I was stunned. She’d killed her sisters’ partners to fulfil some ancient promise and Blatt, unwittingly at the beginning certainly, had helped her. But things hadn’t worked out the way she’d wanted them to with Pearl. So now her ‘daddy’ had to try to free that sister to ‘be together again’ with Opal and all because of me and my little firelit meeting with the dying Kevin Dooley. What had he done, I wondered, immediately after she’d stabbed him? Had he tried to hit her? And if she had been dressed up as a boy how had he known she was a woman? He’d said that she stabbed him. I wanted to ask her then but my throat had closed with fear again, fear at what might lie ahead of me now. This wasn’t the first time I’d thought I might be cashing in my chips that night but it was the first time I felt it had to be a dead cert. Knowing what I now did, they were never going to run the risk of letting me tell anyone else.

  I think we must have been near to Aldgate before anyone spoke again. Sister Teresa turned towards me and said, ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Hancock.’

  ‘What for?’ I said hoarsely, even though I knew full well what for.

  But neither she nor anyone else attempted an answer so, once again, I was left with my thoughts – or, rather, the lack of them.

  Going east it got worse – the devastation, the sight of shadowy figures walking like madmen among the rubble. Men and women in negative against the fires from the incendiary bombs, people without features or identity – people who could just vaporise without a trace. It’s what Opal had counted on – the anonymity of a people at war. I don’t know whether I was more disgusted or afraid just then. I know I couldn’t look at any of them – not Blatt the adoring father whistling at the wheel, not that creature still holding a pistol beside me, not those others, conspirators in their own mother’s death. And yet Ruby, at least, had had feelings for Shlomo Kaplan. Had she forgotten them? Was this younger sister whom everyone, it seemed to me, was falling over themselves to protect more important to her than he had been? And what of Pearl? She was in prison because of what Opal had done.

  ‘So what about Pearl, Mr Blatt?’ I said. I could hear my voice shaking, but I had to find out. ‘How are you going to save her from the gallows for your little girl, eh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you,’ he said.

  Once again the feeling that I was going to die, that they were going to kill me, knocked the side of my heart like a kick from a horse. I looked across at Sister Teresa, hoping maybe for some help from that direction. But what could she do? These women were up to their necks in crimes and the lies that grow up and get nurtured around them. And that included the nun. What, I wondered, as we turned into somewhere very familiar, was it about this Opal that had them all protecting her with such passion? When I stumbled out of the car and on to the grass, Blatt, an old Webley Mark IV revolver, probably from his army days, jammed into my ribs, let me in on at least part of it.

  ‘We all let Opal down one way or another,’ he said, as he took my arm between his fingers and pulled me after him. ‘If Victorine had told me I had a daughter before the Neilson affair, I would have been able to look after them all. I would have done that. If her sisters had been able to protect her against Neilson, maybe he wouldn’t have done those dreadful things to her. And if I’d had the courage to adopt her myself when her mother died . . .’ He shrugged. ‘But there was always Julia to consider – that’s my wife. She couldn’t have children . . .’

  ‘So you condone her murderous actions?’

  ‘He led her to us,’ I heard Sister Teresa mutter, as she, too, stumbled out of the car and on to a moss-covered tombstone. ‘Using his position to give her what she wanted. I couldn’t even hide in my convent! This nightmare has come for me!’ Then, suddenly raising her voice, she shouted, ‘You knew what she was like! We all knew what she was like!’

  ‘Ssssh!’ Ruby hissed. ‘For Christ’s sake, Amb!’

  ‘I didn’t and don’t condone her actions, Mr Hancock,’ Blatt said, as he pushed me, really rather gently, in front of him. ‘But one’s blood is one’s blood and I will, of course, do everything I can to protect my daughter and help her to repay the debt she feels she owes to her mother.’

  ‘But that’s bonkers . . .’

  ‘I don’t really think that a man who runs around during raids talking to imaginary people can make that sort of judgement, do you?’ Blatt said.

  I felt my face redden, even though I only half understood what he was saying. The one thing I’ve always known is that, barmy as I might be, I don’t talk to people who aren’t real. I know that.

  ‘I wish she hadn’t done what she has, but there’s no going back now,’ Blatt continued. ‘Now we all just have to see it through and . . .’

  ‘And if one day she feels she can’t forgive you for not getting her mother off?’ I asked. ‘What then?’

  ‘What indeed?’ Blatt said. There was a look almost of resignation on his face. Was he saying he would, because she was his daughter, let Opal take even his life? I’m not a father, but I do know about loving people. I would draw the line, though. I wouldn’t kill for the Duchess, not even for Hannah. I’ve done too much of that already.

  After a bit, I looked across the ranks of gravestones at the almost gay figure of Opal Reynolds in front of me. Here in St Mary Magdalene’s churchyard where, for me at least, all of this had started, there she was, skipping across the grass just ahead of me – I didn’t know where she was headed to at the time. In the place where the bare-knuckle fight had happened? Near to where poor old Kevin Dooley had met such a terrible and strange end? As if in answer to some of the questions that were going on in my head, she turned and said, ‘I met Kevin Dooley in the public lavatories almost opposite the Boleyn pub in Plaistow. He’d been thrown out. He was very drunk. I said I’d take him somewhere quiet for some french-polishing – for a price.’ She laughed. ‘He was desperate for it, drunk and ghastly. But, then, Kevin was a brute. I’d been watching what he did to Pearl for some time. He beat her, and what about all those children, eh? She had to be rid of him. He deserved to die like that, slowly. They bleed to death inside when you use a pin, but I expect you know—’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘If everything had gone to plan, I would have cared for Pearl and her children afterwards,’ Opal said. ‘But suddenly there you are, Mr Hancock. Now, look, it can’t be a hatpin for you . . .’

  ‘You know that Pearl loved Kevin, don’t you?’ I said wildly, trying to buy myself time. Perhaps somebody, somehow, would come.

  Opal’s face dissolved into a sneer. ‘She can’t have,’ she said. ‘He was appalling.’

  ‘But she did,’ I continued. ‘Whatever he later became, Kevin saved her from a life of destitution after Velma’s father died. She was grateful to hi
m. And, anyway, love is blind, don’t you—’

  ‘Kevin Dooley liked to be pleasured,’ she interrupted. ‘He liked to do it with his big blonde sister-in-law, Martine, up against walls, and he also liked to pick up anything he could find in or outside pubs. Although no “iron” as I believe you call homosexuals around here, I knew he’d go for my “boy”. It was fun. He was so drunk, it was simple and, dressed as a boy – which is, anyway, a great challenge – I could so easily hide my identity, essential if one is to do these things where one might be observed. Of course I showed him I was a girl just after I plunged the pin into his chest. He was staggering by then so I took off my shirt. The shock on his face! It was hilarious! Even better than when I killed the old Orthodox Jew, although not as exciting as Harold’s death. But that was why I went back to the hatpin. It’s so appropriate, historically.’

  ‘Opal,’ Blatt said, ‘let us not talk about it any more.’

  ‘Oh, but I want to,’ I said. I knew we were getting very near now to some sort of conclusion here in this graveyard. Opal Reynolds, at least in Kevin Dooley’s case, might be a bit keen on doing things in what she saw as appropriate ways. I didn’t like to think too much about what she had in mind for me. ‘I want to talk about Shlomo Kaplan actually,’ I said. ‘I want to know why he had to die. He hadn’t done—’

  ‘Oh, yes, he had!’ Opal spat. ‘He was a beast! All men are ultimately beasts! The stories going around about him were ghastly. And that wig?’ She laughed. ‘I couldn’t have Ruby going around in that wig. Those sort of Jews are just not acceptable, are they?’

  I looked back at Ruby who, even through the gloom, I could see was almost totally without expression.

  ‘Of course I put one on myself, a big black one, when I went to Spitalfields to get the old bastard,’ Opal said. ‘But that was just some fun. Wearing one makes you more believable as one of them. That’s why the old man answered the door to me even though there was a raid on, because he thought I was one of his own. He wanted to help me.’

  ‘Ruby,’ I said, ‘all of that about Shlomo was—’

  ‘You mustn’t hurt Mr Hancock. You mustn’t!’ I heard the nun butt in anxiously.

  Ruby Reynolds, her wig still firmly on her head, looked at me coldly and said, ‘He knows it all. We can’t have him hanging about.’

  ‘You like this place, don’t you, Mr Hancock?’ Opal, laughing now, stopped in front of a large rectangular monument that was leaning at about a forty-five-degree angle. St Mary’s, I knew, hadn’t taken any hits from the Jerries as yet, but I also knew that it was old and damaged.

  ‘Ruby, you loved Shlomo,’ I said, my voice quavering a little now.

  ‘Yes, but I love my sister,’ Ruby replied. ‘I care for her, like she’s cared for me.’

  ‘She tricked you out of that synagogue.’

  ‘Yes, and I used you to do it.’ Opal laughed.

  I turned to her. ‘You think that killing me here is sort of right for me, don’t you?’

  ‘His family’ll come looking for him!’ I heard Sister Teresa cry as she, and I, saw Opal raise her pistol towards my head.

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ I said. ‘Someone like me will be missed and people did know where I was going last night.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘Well . . .’ I clammed up tight. I didn’t want to say anything about Hannah. In fact, I didn’t want to say anything about anyone close to me if I was going to be dead as a dodo in a very short space of time. I didn’t want this madwoman going about looking for them.

  ‘Well, if you did tell people you were going up to the West End it won’t do you or them any good,’ Opal said. ‘If you hadn’t interfered, Mr Hancock, poor Pearl wouldn’t be in Holloway now. She’d be with the rest of us. You’ve done enough mucking up.’ She pointed her weapon towards the broken monument and said, ‘Let’s get on, shall we?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘I want you to get in there,’ she said.

  I could see that where the monument had come away from its base there was a gap. You can’t usually see the soil underneath these things even when they do move and sink a bit over the years, but this was a sorry example: not only could I look into the hole underneath it, I could see what I knew were probably broken shards of wood sticking up too. ‘You want me to climb on top of some poor person’s coffin?’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Opal said spitefully. ‘He won’t feel anything and you won’t know that you’re there for long.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Shoot me here, if you must, but I’m not getting in there.’

  I’d survived the trenches. I wasn’t going to die in my worst nightmare. I wasn’t going to be buried alive.

  Blatt, his voice almost filled with fear of her, began, ‘Opal, I don’t think this is really—’

  ‘Daddy, it’s perfect,’ she replied. ‘I’m dressing up Mr Hancock in a coffin. You know we have to kill him and no one will think to look in an existing grave. Once it’s done we can cover him up with what is left of the coffin and some leaves and dirt and . . .’ Even though I couldn’t see them, I could feel the horror in some of the faces of those standing behind me. ‘Now, look, we’re all in it together this time, aren’t we?’ Opal said. ‘We’re all as guilty as hell already and we know it.’

  ‘But you can’t bury him alive!’ The nun was crying now.

  ‘Oh, goodness, no!’ Opal said, laughing softly. ‘I know he’s an undertaker but even I’m not that ambitious. We’d need to have shovels and overalls to do that properly. No, once he’s in I’ll shoot him. Can’t have any mess even here – it might attract attention. I’ve thought it all through. Ruby, would you mind lifting those pieces of wood up so that Mr Hancock can join . . .’ she took a torch out of her pocket and flashed it briefly at one of the inscriptions on the side of the monument ‘. . . Frederick Godfrey?’

  Ruby Reynolds took off her hat and coat, laid them down on the ground beside the monument and set to her gruesome task with a will. She was, I felt at that moment, the only one who was totally with Opal.

  ‘You know that this is all your own fault, don’t you, Mr Hancock?’ Opal said, as she looked at me without a shred of compassion in her cold, hard eyes.

  ‘Never your fault is it, Miss?’ I said. ‘Always some excuse, isn’t there? You were a child, your victim is a bad lot, it’s just a game . . .’

  ‘Yes, well, it is.’

  ‘You killed Neilson because your mum wanted him dead and because he was cruel to you and I can sort of understand that,’ I said. ‘But because you were so young your mind made it into a kind of a game. I think you killed Kevin Dooley and Shlomo Kaplan for your own pleasure, to delight in your own cleverness and to bind what was over and past, your family, to you whether they liked it or not. I don’t think it’s got too much to do with your poor mother now. I think it’s about what’s in your head. But that isn’t anything I can easily understand, thank Christ!’

  ‘Oh, that’s enough!’ she said. ‘What do you know about what I’ve been through and how I feel? Get in there and die.’

  I was pushed from behind, with some force, by Blatt. Stumbling, I fell on my knees in front of a hole. Cleared now of coffin wood, I could just make out the wisps of rotting grave clothes that still clung to what was left of Frederick Godfrey. I felt my entire body heave and I screamed and, I’m ashamed to say, I wet myself at the same time. Thank God Hannah couldn’t see me like this! Although the thought of never seeing her again made me cry even harder. I think it must have been Blatt who eventually silenced me with a punch to the side of the head.

  Chapter Twenty

  Even though I knew I was going to die anyway, I couldn’t lie face down on top of poor old Frederick. There is a word ‘liquefaction’, that fails to do justice to what happens to the soft tissues of a person after burial, but suffice to say it isn’t pleasant. What is also far from nice is the way that old bones crack and splinter as you lower yourself on to them. I ke
pt on saying, ‘Sorry, sorry,’ over and over as I did as this monster asked me, pushing me down, my cheek bleeding on to things I didn’t want to think about. But I still felt bad for Frederick. In fact I think that in spite of the horror of it – the stench, the darkness, the terrifying callousness of those above me on the grass – I was more angry than afraid at this point. What I was being made to do was totally at odds with who I am. Hancock hides away with the dead, looks after them, makes sure above all that they get where they want and need to be. Not this desecration! Not this total disregard for the little we have left that is decent in these terrible times.

  ‘If there’s a hell, you’re on your way there, Opal Reynolds,’ I said.

  ‘You first, though, eh?’ She laughed.

  Lying down now I felt something hard and cold press itself into my left-hand temple. Just like I’d done in the trenches I wished I could pray, but I knew I’d be fooling myself so I shut my eyes instead. It was dark but even so I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing myself pass away. I was back in the mire and the mud and I was crying now for the shame of having ended up like this – desecrating a grave, my clothes covered in blood and piss, dying in the way I’d spent four years dreading. Why, I thought as I lay there with that gun against my head, had I lived through the Great War just to come to this? What had been the point of it? Maybe this was all some sort of punishment for passing poor old Kevin Dooley by? Now perhaps I’d know how he’d felt dying violently at the hands of this madwoman.

  From up above there was a grunt and then a woman’s muffled voice said something that made no sense to me at the time.