I started to say something wisecracky about how it would take more than bombs and girls with guns to kill me, when Hannah put one of her fingers over my lips. ‘Because, see, I knew that you’d come back for me,’ she said.
‘Well, yes, love, you know I would.’
‘You’re the only one that ever has,’ she said, and then she turned away very quickly. ‘Listen to me, soppy old cow.’
But I could see there were tears in her eyes and it caused me to have a few in mine too. Love isn’t a word I’d use either about or to Hannah, it frightens her, but it is what I feel for her. I know what she is and what she does – why she’s in this life too. Dumped by her boyfriend, rejected by her parents. Women don’t do too well alone, don’t do too well unless they’ve got money, and, as she’d told me herself, Hannah didn’t think she deserved any better than the streets anyway. Poor girl. I give her money, of course I do, but not very often, not now. She’d rather I take her out once in a while. Bad as me, really, she is, out and about and happy to be so with the dead.
Hannah went over to the sink and picked up a little bottle of scent from beside one of the taps. ‘How’s Velma?’ she said, as she dabbed a little behind each ear and on her wrists.
‘Happy now she’s got her mum back,’ I said. Pearl had finally been released from Holloway two days before, and she and Velma had had a tearful reunion in our parlour. Now they knew who had killed Kevin Dooley, the police and Pearl’s new solicitor had got her out. The new brief, a Mr Dobson, had also managed to persuade the coppers that Pearl’s defence about going to Dot Harris for an abortion was a story she’d made up because she was frightened. No one believed this, including me, but with no evidence that didn’t matter. Dot certainly wasn’t going to argue with it. But Pearl was out and that was the main thing.
‘So what about the Dooleys?’ Hannah asked, as the smell of Californian Poppy began to get inside my nostrils. ‘Pearl back there, is she?’
‘She’s been,’ I said. I’d taken her over to Canning Town and seen for myself how hard it had been for Vi Dooley and her son Johnny to admit they’d been wrong about her. ‘Picked up the rest of the kids.’
‘What, and took them back to yours?’ Hannah’s eyes widened with surprise.
I laughed. All those kids in our place! ‘No,’ I said. ‘Sister Teresa took her and all of them down to Southend with her.’
‘To the convent?’
‘To start with, yes,’ I said. ‘Pearl’ll have to work and then who knows?’
If Sister Teresa carries on doing what she’s doing I’ll be very surprised. By her own admission, and just like Pearl, in her way she had hidden in the first safe place she could find. For Pearl that was marriage, any marriage, and children. For Amber it was the veil, doing penance for a crime that wasn’t even hers. Thinking back on it, which I’ve done almost all of the time these past couple of weeks, I reckon it was only ever Ruby who had found any peace in her life. Had Opal not ruined it, she would have been happy among the Jews with Shlomo as her husband. Gerald would’ve got used to it eventually, and Ruby would’ve been a contented congregant at the Great Synagogue on Brick Lane with all the other frummers. Fred Bryant says she’ll almost certainly hang for the murder of her sister and Blatt, and you don’t have to be a copper to realise that’s on the cards. But when I’m called to give evidence I will do my best to try to give the court some idea of the strain and grief she was suffering, of the cruelty that had been done to her. However, as Sister Teresa said to me the night after it had happened, ‘Ruby ain’t going to try to get out of it, Mr Hancock. She did what she thought was right. She’s prepared, as she said, to hang for it.’
But it still isn’t a comfortable thought, so for a moment I frowned.
Hannah, seeing this look flash across my face, said, ‘I hope you’re not going to have a face like that on all through the picture.’
‘No.’ Then I smiled. ‘How can I with Deanna Durbin up on the screen and you on my arm?’
Hannah shook her head in mock irritation. ‘Come on, then,’ she said, as she went over to the door and opened it. ‘Let’s get out of here before the Jerries turn up.’
I stood up and followed her out into the hall.
Epilogue
When someone you know dies the world changes, or so some people say. In many ways, however, it remains the same and I don’t know which is more hurtful: the change or the endless sameness of it all.
I’m standing here now, back in the graveyard where the bare-knuckle fight took place, next to where Kevin Dooley died, where I was nearly buried in the monument that the woman I’m looking at now is leaning against. I know she’s scared, of the bombs crashing to the ground all over the manor as well as of me because, as happens sometimes, I can’t help laughing. Sometimes in the trenches I’d laugh for hours without a break.
But I know it’s a measure of her desperation that she’s followed me up here. ‘Johnny’s chucked us out,’ she said, as she grabbed hold of my sleeve that first time over by the gate. ‘You helped Pearl. Help me. I’ll do anything you want.’
And then, poor cow, she’d opened her blouse and shown herself to me. She’s a well-built woman, Martine Dooley, and I can easily appreciate what a man might see in her. But not me. I can’t take to a woman whose face shows open disgust every time she looks at you. I started to stutter I wasn’t interested and then she began to laugh, which is why I’m howling myself now.
So she, Martine, is silent and I am behaving like a madman. It’s nearly winter now and the Nazis have all but blasted us back to the start of creation here in West Ham. Everyone has lost someone, many of whom I’ve buried. The business goes from strength to strength.
Here I sit, Francis Hancock – undertaker, wog – out of his tiny mind, looking at that still broken monument that Opal Reynolds put me into.
Wishing, madly, I could climb inside one last and final time.
19 Princelet Street –
Europe’s First Museum
of Immigration and Diversity
Although the characters in this book are fictional, most of the locations are real and many of them are still in existence. Sadly, not all of these old buildings are in the best of condition. The building referred to in this book as the ‘Princelet Synagogue’ is one of them. Originally the home of a Huguenot silk merchant, 19 Princelet Street is a magical place which possesses a beautiful Victorian East European Synagogue built over its rear garden.
The Spitalfields Centre charity is working to preserve this building and give it new life as a place of education and a museum of immigration. It will be a celebration of the rich diversity that exists amongst the people who have settled into the area and of the tradition of giving refuge that Britain can so rightly be proud of.
This delicate, vulnerable and evocative building is close to my heart both as a place and as a symbol of cross-cultural tolerance and understanding. However, in order to properly preserve this international site of conscience, a Grade II* Listed building of national importance as a permanent exploration of issues of immigration, exile and identity, the charity needs money. If you would like to help save the house and make the museum a reality, then please send your contribution to The Spitalfields Centre, 19 Princelet St, London, E1 6QH. The Spitalfields Centre is a registered charity number 287279, www.19princeletstreet.org.uk.
Thank you.
Barbara Nadel.
Glossary
Abyssinia (slang) ‘I’ll-be-seeing-you’
Anderson type of World War II domestic air-raid shelter
billet housing for military personnel. Used by old soldiers to describe their home
buckshee (slang) free
bunce (slang) something good, usually money
frum (Yiddish) religious, observant. ‘Frummer’ – a religious person
Funf stupid German spy character in the popular wartime radio show ITMA
gelt (Yiddish) money
goy (Yiddish) a gentile. Plural ‘goyim’
gyppo (sla
ng) gypsy
Hassidic Jews very observant; otherwise known as the ‘Pious Ones’
Jewish Free School in Bell Lane, Stepney until bombed in 1941. Gave Jewish pupils a largely secular, English-language education
karzy lavatory
mensch (Yiddish) gentleman
mug (slang) face
nipper (slang) child
oppo (naval slang) short for ‘opposite number’, a pal, a chum
phut (Hindi) to break down, go wrong
Ratcliff southern part of Stepney
sappers military engineers
schlep (Yiddish) to drag
schtum (Yiddish) quiet
shikseh (Yiddish) a gentile woman or girl
sort (slang) a good man
Torah Jewish law and scriptures
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