‘I don’t like the look of this, Bert. I don’t like it at all.’ Her touch was light, like a child’s, and fearful. It made him suddenly bold and he took her hand, leaned forwards, and jerked away the bedclothes. He felt the clammy pressure of her fingers against his as they stared through the half-light at the curled white body with its livid face, gagged mouth, and the black thing protruding from the pool of blood between the parted legs like, like—
Elsie shrieked and fell against him and he took her in his arms and bundled her out of the room and down the stairs, while all the time she was screaming the same thing, over and over, ‘The poker! The poker!’ right out into the street, and she didn’t stop and then there were people crowding the door and policemen and everyone was shouting and rushing about and Elsie was shaking against his chest, sobbing and sobbing. And later, at the neighbours’, still she kept her hand in his. That was what he remembered most clearly, when the rest had become a terrible blur with the only clear detail being the poker, black and stiff, sticking out of what had been…he could not bring himself to think the word for what it had been. The bottom part of her. That’s what he’d said to the police, and they’d understood. Men of the world. Not like him, except…except… that Elsie had turned to him when she was frightened; she’d touched his arm for comfort, before they’d seen the…thing… that was in the bed.
And—God bless her—she’d never once asked him why he’d called Miss Parker ‘dear’ when he’d shouted through the door. Poor, pathetic Edie Parker, who’d met such a terrible end, and who’d let him kiss her on the landing when no one was there, who’d let him put his hand inside her dress and feel her skinny body. He’d known what she’d done for a living, all right, seen her on the street once, seen the way she was with men, anxious, cringing, not flaunting, so that paying to go with her would almost have been an act of charity, and he knew that that was why she’d stood there, defeated, and let him touch her, perhaps with some dim, pitiful hope that it would lead to something off the rent. He’d often wondered if she’d let him do more—do what his wife would no longer allow—but he’d never dared ask her and he knew that made him as pathetic as she was, so he’d cancelled the memory. Then, turning to Elsie, he’d seen a new look in her eyes, something like respect.
‘Don’t worry,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll look after you.’
‘Thank you, Bert,’ she’d said.
Again, he felt the soft, warm pressure of her fingers on his arm, and after a moment’s hesitation, he leaned over and gave her a kiss.
Monday 23rd September
Rene
I was watching the boys play cricket when I heard about it. Nothing fancy, just a floorboard for a bat and an old tennis ball up on St Martin’s Lane, the bomb site next to the Mitre. It’s not at all flat—there’s piles of bricks and all sorts—and they’re not supposed to be there at all, really; the landlord’s always coming and shouting at them, but they’ve got to go somewhere, haven’t they? I’d made a place for myself on a bit of wall that was left, and I’m giving them a bit of a clap every now and then, for encouragement, and then one of the big boys gives the ball a great wallop with the board and it shoots straight into a toilet that’s perched up on a heap of rubble! Of course they all start yelling and shouting about who’s going to be the one to fish it out again. They’ve upended one little lad and I can see his head’s going to go in there, so I’m trying to pick my way over there to sort it out when Lily and Mollie come rushing up, shrieking their heads off, and almost send me flying.
‘Did you hear what happened?’
I said, ‘Of course I heard it. I’m not deaf.’
Lily said, ‘No, not the bombing. I mean Edie.’
‘What about Edie?’
‘Got herself killed!’
‘I didn’t realise it was that close.’
‘It wasn’t a raid. She was murdered.’
Well, you could have heard a pin drop. I looked round and saw all the boys standing there staring at her with eyes like saucers. I took Lily’s arm. ‘Not here…’ and dragged her off round the corner with them all following a few paces behind, like a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps. I told them to clear off, and then I said to Lily, ‘Now, pull yourself together and tell me what happened, and for heaven’s sake keep your voice down.’
‘Edie was murdered.’
Mollie said, ‘It’s true, Rene. She was strangled, and now they’re saying there’s a maniac on the loose. It’s horrible. I’m not going out tonight; we’re not safe. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I heard she had a poker stuck up inside her.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Kathleen. Bridget told her. She lives in the same street. One of the neighbours said that Edie’s landlady’d been up to her room Saturday morning and found her, and she rushed into the street, screaming her head off. The whole street heard it. As God’s my witness, Rene, it’s true.’
‘It’s horrible. Who did it?’
‘That’s what I’m saying, Rene, they don’t know. It could be anyone.’
I said to Lily, ‘Remember that one she went with from the shelter? I didn’t like the look of him.’
‘What, Soho Square?’
‘Mmm. That one she went out with. Mind you, that was… what? Monday? A week ago.’
‘Couldn’t have been him, then. I’ve seen her. Anyway, she was only found this morning.’
‘He gagged her,’ said Mollie. ‘So she couldn’t scream. Strangled her.’
I said, ‘I don’t understand. She never took them back. She always went up Rathbone Place—that yard behind the Beer House. The warehouse place.’
‘Perhaps he wanted something special—offered more money.’
‘Silly girl…’
Mollie said, ‘But you don’t know, do you? One minute it’s an ordinary man, and the next minute you’ve got a maniac on your hands. It’s terrible. We’ll all be murdered in our beds.’
I said, ‘No, we won’t. You’ve just got to watch out for yourself, that’s all.’
We talked about it for a while, and then they left and I sat there thinking till Tommy came running over in his Indian headdress I bought him—he’s so proud of it, wears it all the time. ‘You all right, Auntie Rene?’
‘Yes, dear. Right as rain. You go and play.’
But I wasn’t all right. I’d planned to go straight to work, but I felt a bit peculiar, so I had a little walk to try and settle myself. I tried to put Edie out of my mind but it didn’t work. I kept thinking about how she’d come into the pub once and showed us this doll she’d got. It was a sweet thing, china, good quality, with real hair and a little frock, all lace. She seemed ever so pleased with it, and I thought it was a present for some kiddie, but when Lily asked her where she’d got it, she said there’d been a church hit, and she’d found it lying in the road.
I said to her, ‘That’s not a dolly, it’s Baby Jesus. You can’t keep that—what’ll they do come Christmas?’
She got all upset and told me she wasn’t stealing because it was just there, and when I said she ought to take it back she said, ‘Oh, you don’t understand, I haven’t got anything!’ and pushed it back in her bag and ran away.
Lily said, ‘Oh, she’s upset because it’s like a baby and she had to have one stopped and it’s sent her weak in the head.’
I said, ‘Well, she wasn’t much before,’ which is true, but all the same, I felt that sorry for her.
I was standing there on the pavement like a fool, and I suddenly came to myself and thought, just my luck if I get picked up now. Not that it happens so much these days, what with the blackout and the police being too busy since the raids started, but it used to—you’d be going out for a paper, minding your own business, and it’d be, ‘Come on, it’s your turn.’ This every two or three weeks, mind, but you can’t argue, because they’re only doing their job, same as we are. And to be fair, they always try and fix the bail quick so’s we can get back out
and earn the fine.
Mind you, there’s girls who work in the brothels up at Mayfair and St James’s, and they never get raided. It’s because of who goes there—politicians and toffs—so the police have to turn a blind eye to it. Not that it’s fair—those girls make a fortune—but it’s the way of the world. Course, thinking about that brought me back to Edie again, saying what a lot of dirty so-and-sos they are down at Bow Street; not the coppers, but them at the back of the court, all listening. She had one where she was watching a man fiddling with himself and of course the policemen had to say that he was—you know—masturbating—and she’d asked him, before, would he say it quietly so the ones at the back couldn’t hear, but of course he got told to speak up and they were all laughing at her…they just go in for a bit of fun, and of course they’re not paying for it. Poor Edie was in pieces, after. She said to me, ‘I just wanted to run away and hide.’
I was thinking about all this, and then I heard a voice behind me: ‘Here, what’s your game?’ and someone grabbed my shoulder. It was Annie—I was standing on her patch. She’s a big woman, with what I call Scottish looks, freckles and red hair, and she’s got a temper to match, so you want to keep on the right side of her. I said I wasn’t working, and when she’d calmed down I told her about Edie, and she said she’d warn Susie and Eileen, because they’re in the next street, but it’s like she said, what can we do? We’ve got to earn a living.
That made me think I’d better get to work, but I ended up going for a great long walk past the bombing in Oxford Street. John Lewis is wrecked, and Bourne & Hollingsworth, Selfridges, Peter Robinson…all these mannequins lying around, plaster things, bodies and arms and legs stacked up on the pavement. It made me think of Edie again, looking at that, so I thought I’d nip down the road to the Marquess, just to steady myself, but of course when I got there, it was all ‘Did you hear about poor Edie?’ so that left me feeling worse than before. I bumped into one of my regulars, and we went off round St James’s Square in a taxi, so that was a pound from him, and then a couple of others I picked up in Frith Street and took back, so that came to four pounds. But all the time I’m lying on my back I’m thinking of Edie cut up like that. I can’t get it out of my mind, and I’m gritting my teeth—Hurry up and get done before I scream—and there’s the man saying, ‘Put a bit of life into it, can’t you?’ Well, after the second, I thought, that’s my lot for tonight, and I took my blanket and cushion and went along to the shelter.
Of course all the old girls have got wind of it, so they’re whispering about Edie, too, and I can hear Ale Mary louder than all the others put together: ‘The wages of sin is death!’ and they’re all black coats and hats in a row, nodding their heads, and I’m sitting there thinking, I don’t want to listen to this, and wondering if it’s quiet enough to go home, when this young chap sort of sidles in and sits down beside me. Nervous. First time, you can always tell. I had half a mind to send him packing, because that sort always needs a fuss making and they don’t know what to do, but I could see he’d really screwed up his courage to come and speak to me, and of course you can charge a bit more because they don’t know the value. There’ll be more of them like that now, with all the young servicemen on leave, first time in London… He’s stammering away and blushing like a girl, and I’m thinking, this is attracting attention, so I turn to him and say, ‘Shall we go somewhere else?’
He’s nodded, and we’re just about to leave when Ale Mary—I see this out of the corner of my eye—she gets up and starts towards us, none too steady, and she looks at him and looks at me, and then she puts her face right up to his, hiccupping away with her mouth all wet, and she says, ‘He preserveth not the life of the wicked.’ Then she falls straight over backwards and cracks her head on the floor.
Of course he’s out of there before you can say Jack Robinson and then there’s a great to-do, everybody crowding round, ‘You all right, Ma?’ and the warden comes in and he’s fanning her with his helmet, and the old girls are glaring at me as if I’d given her a fourpenny one. It was queer, though, when I thought about it afterwards—I mean, other times, I’d have been angry: I know I said I’d shut up shop, but that was a good two quid she’d cost me. I wasn’t angry, though, I just started shaking and couldn’t stop—I don’t know why. I think it was the shock of seeing old Mary come up to that young man and talk right into his face like that, really brought it home about Edie, somehow, even worse, like something coming in a big rush and swallowing me up. I suddenly had to get out; even if there were bombs outside I couldn’t stay there another minute.
I found myself in the street, leaning against the wall with my teeth chattering. I’d got my hands over my face and then there was this hand on my arm and I jumped a mile. It was the warden, I could see from the gleam of the helmet, right up close to me, and I thought, I can’t bear it, I can’t have any more trouble, and I said, ‘I’m going, leave me alone.’
He said, ‘No, wait,’ and held onto my arm.
I said, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Come on.’
‘You’re not taking me down the station! I never touched her. She fell over all by herself!’
‘Who said anything about that? A cup of tea, that’s what you need. Come round to the post.’
You could have knocked me down with a feather. I was still pretty wobbly, but he kept his hand on my arm all the way. He had a funny stride, sort of a lurch, and he kept bumping up against me, but there didn’t seem anything queer in it, just very determined, the way he marched us along, like he thought I was the one going to tip over, not him.
When we got there, he called out, ‘Lady here had a bit of an upset. Make some room!’ and took me right in.
They’ve got it nice in there, all painted, with a little table with a cloth on and wooden boxes from the market so they can sit down. There were a few men in there lying on the floor, on top of their coats, dead to the world.
The warden said, ‘Don’t worry, they’ve been on duty thirty hours—it’ll take a lot more than us to wake them now,’ and he was right, we stepped right over them and they didn’t move a muscle. ‘We’ve got all types, here,’ he said, and pointed at them in turn. ‘He’s a lawyer, he’s a taxi driver, that bloke works at the post office, and that one at the end, he’s an opera singer!’
The tea was hot and sweet and very welcome. The warden got me sat down, and pulled up a box for himself. I hadn’t really got a look at him before, in all the fuss, but in the light I could see he was a big chap. I don’t mean fat, more…burly, I suppose you’d call it—middle-aged, black hair with a bit of grey, his nose all flattened like a boxer and cauliflower about the ears, but he’d got nice blue eyes with a smile in them. Then I looked down and saw he’d got one leg stuck out in front of him all awkward. He saw where I was looking, and he said, ‘Got it in the last one. Eighteen, I was. Haven’t walked straight since.’
‘Oh… I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t give me much bother.’
There was a pause, then he lifted his mug and said, ‘Cheers!’ He winked at me. ‘Collapse of stout party, you might say.’
‘You mean…’
‘Old Mary. Don’t worry, she’ll be right as ninepence.’
By now, the other wardens had cleared off, and it was just the two of us. I said, ‘Well, this is cosy, I must say,’ but I was thinking, him being friendly like that, perhaps he wants something for nothing. He started looking a bit shifty, and I thought, aye, aye.
He said, ‘I heard about your pal. Bad business. You want to be careful.’ My heart sank then, because I thought, he’s after money, the dirty ponce—protection, you might say.
I said, ‘What do you mean, my pal?’
‘Edie Parker.’ He was staring down at his gammy leg.
I said, ‘Look, Mr…’
‘Nolan. Harry Nolan.’
‘Mr Nolan—’
‘Harry.’
‘Harry. I don’t want any trouble, so if it’s all
right with you, I’ll be on my way. I won’t be coming in the shelter again, I’ll make other arrangements, and—’
‘Whoa! No need for that. You’ve as much right to be in the shelter as anyone else, far as I can see.’
Well, now I was pretty sure which way the wind was blowing, so I looked him straight in the eye. ‘Listen, Mr Nolan, let’s get one thing clear. You’re not asking, I’m not offering, and there’s an end to it.’
That brought his head up sharp enough. ‘What I said—I didn’t mean nothing by it. Not like you thought. Rene… I’m just saying, you be careful.’
‘How do you know my name’s Rene?’
He looked surprised. ‘Well…just…one of them in the shelter, it must have been. I’ve seen you there, before. You’re a nice woman, Rene, but there’s some wicked people out there, that’s all.’
I suddenly remembered the man from the Wheatsheaf calling us all the names as if we were the lowest things in the world.
I said, ‘No, I’m not. I’m not a nice woman, and that’s—’ The words came out before I could stop them. I felt so muddled and upset, and about ready to cry, if you want the truth.
He said, ‘Here! No need to go upsetting yourself. You’re a very nice woman, and don’t let anybody tell you different.’ He was looking straight at me and his face was so kind, with so much care in it, I thought, he really does think I’m a nice woman, and I know it sounds daft, but that made me want to cry all the more.
I said, ‘Oh, dear, what must you think of me?’
‘I think you’ve had a nasty turn, is what I think. A bit of kip, and you’ll be fine. Now, I’m going to take you back to the shelter, and if those old cats start giving you trouble, you just come to me.’
‘It’s very kind of you.’
‘Not at all. Doing my job. Upsy-daisy!’ He had to put his hand on the table and push himself up because of his funny leg, and then he held out his elbow for me to put my arm through, very polite, as if he was taking me into dinner at the Dorchester, not back to Soho Square. He didn’t talk much on the way back, but when we got to the shelter he said, very quiet, ‘Now, you remember what I said. And don’t you go out no more tonight, it’s not safe.’
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