by Irene Carr
‘I’m sorry, Matt.’ Katy hesitated, then added, ‘I couldn’t do that, couldn’t have you tormented that way, when you were thousands of miles from home.’
Matt sighed, ‘I guessed that would be it.’ He was silent for a time, staring past Katy absently, recalling the experience. His eyes returned to her and he said, ‘I talked to Fleur. I told her all I’d found out and that from now on she had to live on the allowance I send her from my Army pay. I’ll support her because she is my wife, so long as she is faithful to me.’ He stopped there because he had caught a flicker of change in Katy’s expression, gone as quickly as seen, but he seized on it: ‘What is it? You know something, Katy.’ His hand reached out and gripped hers. His voice rose, demanding, ‘Tell me! It cut through the hum of conversation in the room, stilled the other voices and the girls and men turned their heads to stare.
Katy begged, ‘Matt! Please! Don’t make a scene here!’
He followed her glance and saw the others watching. They looked away from his glare but when he went on he lowered his voice. He was still insistent, still clamped Katy’s slim fingers in his own. ‘Well?’
She confessed, ‘There’s a man.’ She was sure there had been more than one but would not say. One was bad enough. ‘He was living in the house. I saw him, talked with him. The maid told me he and Fleur were living together.’
Matt said softly, ‘Dear God! And I loved her. Her extravagance and moods and the way she used to try to manipulate me, I learnt about all these after we were wed but I made excuses for her, told myself she would change back to the girl I’d fallen for. But that girl never really existed. She was just a pretence. What’s that saying? “All things to all men.” That was Fleur.’
He released Katy’s hands and now she reached out to hold his. ‘I’m sorry, Matt.’ She could have wept for him.
Matt was not going to weep. He stood up and said grimly, ‘It’s time to put a finish to this. Now.’ He looked up at the clock. ‘I can just catch the next train out of King’s Cross.’ He looked down at Katy, now on her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Katy. This has been a rough ride for you. Thank you for all you did.’
He started for the door, long striding, and Katy pursued him. She caught up with him outside on the pavement. ‘Matt! Wait! Don’t go off like this!’ A motor car with hooded headlights because of the blackout, a Vauxhall like that used by Matt before the war, pulled into the kerb and Matt shouted, ‘Cab?’
The driver, swathed in a khaki greatcoat, responded, ‘No, this is a private car.’
Katy clutched Matt’s sleeve and pleaded, ‘Don’t get yourself into more trouble! She’s done enough damage to you!’
‘She won’t do any more.’ Matt brushed off her hand as he turned from the car and set off along the pavement.
The driver of the Vauxhall was out on the pavement now and asking, ‘Miss Merrick?’
‘Yes.’ Katy was still staring helplessly after Matt. ‘This is the car you asked for, miss.’
Matt had disappeared into the darkness under the trees. Katy turned, climbed into the rear of the car and it pulled away. She was afraid for Matt but this other matter came first. She wiped the tears from her eyes and braced herself. Ivor Spargo would be waiting.
Katy left the car several streets away from Barker’s Lane. This was a familiar environment for her, an area of close-built terraces of little houses down by the docks of London’s river. She wound her way through the darkened streets, seeing few people, until she came to Barker’s Lane. Here there were a half-dozen pubs crammed into one short, narrow thoroughfare and two little music halls besides small cafes. The pavements were thronged with people and Katy saw why Ivor had chosen this place. He could watch for her from some dark doorway to confirm she was alone, and disappear in the crowd if he needed to run.
She began to pace up and down the street, her eyes searching for Ivor in the crowd flowing past. There were no trees here and the blackout was not complete so she could make out faces at some distance. Outside one pub, halfway along the street, stood a little group of four men, arguing. They stood on the steps leading up to the door and so could see her as she passed but they did not look her way. Katy walked for a half-hour and at some point she noticed that the group had now moved to the steps of a music hall opposite the pub where they had been before. And then she saw Ivor.
He showed briefly on a corner of an alley some ten yards away, standing in the light leaked from a cafe as its door opened and closed. In that blink of an eye he beckoned and she turned towards him. For a moment he was seen as just a shadow as the door of the cafe was shut and the gloom closed in again, then he was gone. Katy followed him into the alley and hurried after his receding back. They traversed a network of streets. Every now and again she would see the pale blur of his face as he turned to confirm she was still there — and that they were not being followed. She trailed him, but cautiously and not too fast, stopping at each turning. She knew he would wait for her and she was in no hurry to walk into his trap. He would wait because he wanted the money. Katy wanted Louise.
At last Ivor turned into a dark and silent house. Katy paused at the door. The passage inside was a place of impenetrable shadows. She delayed again, calling, ‘There’s no light! I can’t see my way!’
Ivor was impatient now: ‘Aw, come on!’
Katy insisted, ‘I want to see where I’m putting my feet.’
She heard the tread of his boots on the stairs, then the scrape of a match and a lamp glowed. Ivor grumbled, ‘Come on up.’
Katy climbed the uncarpeted stairs. There was a stale smell of cooking and of damp. Mouldering paper hung on the walls. Ivor held open the door at the head of the stairs and ushered her in with a mocking flourish. The oil lamp he had lit stood on the table. There was one straight-backed chair and a dishevelled bed. As Katy passed him to enter, Ivor shut the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. Katy swallowed.
Ivor demanded, ‘Have you brought the money?’ He held out his hand.
Katy reached into her bag and took out a wad of banknotes. Ivor snatched them and began to count. Katy said, ‘There’s thirty. I’ll give you the other thirty when you tell me where to find Louise.’
Ivor glared at her. ‘If you haven’t got it I’ll tell you nothing.’
Katy confirmed, ‘I’ve got it.’ Then added quickly, ‘If you try to take it I’ll scream the place down.’
Ivor grinned then: ‘All right. A bargain’s a bargain. Louise, is it? I’m told she takes after her father, white-headed. I saw him in Newcastle just a few days ago, knew him right off. The feller I was with, he told me about him — and his little blonde lass. He never went to Germany. He played some trick on you. Him and Louise have been living up there all along.’
Newcastle! Katy’s face was frozen in disbelief. But then she remembered the day she had thought she had seen Louise on Tyneside but then concluded she had been mistaken. She had been right all along. Howard had booked the passages to Germany for Louise and himself, but only as a red herring. He had not taken them up! All this time Louise had been only ten miles away, but securely hidden as one small child in a big, sprawling city.
As these thoughts tumbled through her dazed mind she was still listening to Ivor as he spouted the poison he knew would hurt her: ‘They don’t call him Howard Ross, either. His name there is Ralph Norgren. He’s been getting rich for years and has a big house where he keeps these girls. He lives off them but they don’t ply their trade there; he sends them down to the riverside to do that so he’s in the clear. Folks let him alone because he uses a knife and those lasses of his are terrified of him. The feller I talked to told me to steer clear of Norgren, said the police wanted him but could never get anyone to give evidence.’
Ivor stuffed the banknotes into a pocket and instead took out a scrap of newspaper. He held it up and Katy could see it was torn from the Newcastle Daily Journal. Ivor waved it. ‘I wrote his address on here. That’s where you’ll find him — and her.’ Katy could see t
he pencilled writing on the margin of the scrap of paper and stepped forward, reaching for it, but he snatched it back. ‘Money first!’
Katy got out the second wad of notes but clutched it to her breast. ‘Give me the address.’
Ivor held it out but as Katy went to take it he let it go. As it fell she stooped to snatch it out of the air, and Ivor seized the chance to whip one arm around her, the other over her mouth. His voice in her ear said, gloating, ‘You’ll do no screaming now.’ Katy panicked for a moment because it had all gone wrong. But then rage took charge of her, outrage at the way this man had pursued her, tried to extort money from her, was keeping her from her daughter. She kicked out, caught the table and sent the oil lamp flying to fall with a splintering crash. Ivor cursed. ‘You stupid bitch!’ His grip on her mouth slackened slightly in that instant of blackness and Katy sank her teeth into a finger. He yelled with the pain of it and tore his hand away as the first flames licked up from the spilled oil of the broken lamp. Katy pulled one of her arms loose from his grip and her scrabbling fingers found the whistle in her bag. She put it to her lips and blew a long blast.
They both heard the boots drumming along the passage below and then on the stairs. Ivor shouted, ‘You’ve cheated me!’ He threw her aside, ran to the window and drew the curtain.
A voice outside bawled, ‘There he is!’
Ivor turned back into the room and then the door burst inwards and men shouldered through it. Ivor went down under them but there was no fight in him, no chance for him. Hand torches suddenly blazed, lighting up the room. Katy saw Ivor lifted up and handcuffs snapped on his wrist. She recognised the two big men, police in plain clothes. They had been part of the group who had stood outside the pub in Barker’s Lane, and later by the music hall. One of them took her arm, steadying. ‘You did very well. If you hadn’t delayed at every corner, then when you got to this place, we might have lost him. As it is, they’ll put him away for a long time, that’s certain.’
Katy was not listening, was smoothing out the scrap of newspaper carefully and reading the address pencilled on it. She took back her money when the police found it, then let them escort her downstairs and through the little crowd of curious spectators who had already gathered. She noticed that the driver of the Vauxhall standing at the kerb was the same who had met her at the hostel. But all that was seen in a daze.
The big policeman put his head into the car to say,
My thanks for this night’s work. Is there anything we can do for you?’
Katy had Louise’s address tucked away in her bag and burned into her memory. ‘I want to go back to the hostel to pack and then to King’s Cross to catch a train. Will your driver take me?’
Seconds later she had started on her journey, in search of those she loved.
Chapter Twenty-Four
SUNDERLAND AND NEWCASTLE. FEBRUARY 1918.
Katy was torn two ways, but as the night train pounded north she progressed from instinctive mother love to cold logic. She reasoned that she had waited nearly four years to reclaim Louise; she could wait another few hours. She had to set her mind at rest about Matt. She reached the bleak decision as the carriage swayed and she rocked gently between a sailor and a burly private in the Durham Light Infantry, his boots and gaiters still caked with the mud of Flanders. The men in that crowded train slept soundly, except for the private, who jerked and muttered in his sleep and sometimes shouted out and briefly wakened them all. Katy also dozed from exhaustion, but when the train ran into the station at Durham, the castle and cathedral looming in the grey dawn, she was wide awake. She had a ticket through to Newcastle but got off the express. A few minutes later she was on the slow stopping train to Sunderland.
Katy walked up to Matt’s house from Sunderland Station, partly to clear her head after the night in the train, partly because she was uneasy as to what she was walking into. Sight of the house did not reassure her. No smoke rose from the chimney and the place had an abandoned look; she realised there were no curtains at the windows. Katy used the brass knocker, unpolished and green with verdigris, to bang on the front door. She heard a heavy, echoing tread in the hall and then Matt opened to her. He was in his shirtsleeves, freshly washed and shaved, still drying himself on a towel. He stopped when he saw her, the towel held up to his face, and said, ‘Katy? What are you doing here?’
‘I — came to see how you were.’ Katy smiled weakly after she had said it. As if it was a casual call, 300 miles by train!
Matt lowered the towel and she saw he was red-eyed and his face was drawn. ‘I’m fine.’ That was patently a lie. He said sardonically, ‘Or I will be when I get out of here.’ Then he set the door wide and invited, ‘Come in and I’ll tell you all about it. I’d ask you to make yourself comfortable but you’d find that difficult.’
Katy entered and found the hall inside was bare. There was no hallstand, pictures or carpet. That explained. Matt’s echoing footsteps. She could see into the sitting-room where she had sat with Harry Dawkins and that was also stripped bare. Matt sat down on the stairs and patted the space on the tread beside him: ‘Come and sit here. There’s nothing else left. I slept last night on the floor under my greatcoat. There’s a stale loaf and some coffee in the kitchen but that’s all.’ He fumbled in the breast pocket of his tunic and brought out a folded sheet of paper. ‘That explains it all.’
Katy sat down beside him, smoothed out the paper and read Fleur’s cramped and ornate script. There were two pages, for the most part of abuse, but the gist of it was that she had gone to America with Harry Dawkins. His father owned a restaurant and Harry was going to have his own band.
Katy folded the letter and handed it back to Matt. ‘I’m sorry, Matt. She’s hurt you a lot.’
He shrugged. ‘She’d have hurt me a lot more if she’d stayed with me longer. To hell with her.’ He tucked the letter back in his pocket: ‘That’s evidence.’
Katy questioned, ‘Evidence?’
‘For a divorce. I don’t know a damned thing about the law but I think I have grounds.’ Now he looked at Katy. ‘It’s a certainty Fleur wouldn’t have come all this way on my account. Why did you?’
Katy confessed, ‘I was coming anyway. I know where Louise is.’ She told him about Ivor, and Louise being in Newcastle. ‘I’m on my way there but I wanted to be sure you were all right.’
Matt grinned, ‘You thought I might have been charged with assault and battery on this Dawkins?’
Katy answered, pink-cheeked, ‘Something like that.’
But mainly she had come in case he needed comfort. Matt said drily, ‘I would have been, if he’d been here.’
He stood up. ‘I’ll fetch my kit and we’ll get started.’ Katy asked, ‘We? Where?’
Matt answered, ‘Newcastle. It sounds as though you have as much trouble as I did. If you’re going after Louise then I’m going with you.’
Katy argued, ‘Matt, you can’t! You’ll have overstayed your leave if you don’t report back tonight. They’ll treat you as a deserter!’ She recalled what the policeman had said about Ivor: ‘They’ll put him away for a long time.’
He shrugged, ‘That can’t be helped.’ Then grinning, ‘What about you? Are you a deserter?’
‘No. I told the Commandant and she gave me a week’s leave. So, please, Matt, go back.’
But Matt was adamant. ‘I’m coming with you.’
They drank a cup of bitter coffee and caught the train to Newcastle.
At the police station Katy talked to a Sergeant Bullock, tall, lean and greying. He sat at his desk and listened patiently to her story until she mentioned: ‘Howard Ross is known here as Ralph Norgren.’ At that, Bullock interrupted, Norgren? Just wait a minute.’ He left, but a few minutes later returned to usher them into an office: ‘This is Inspector Formby.’
Formby was trim in his dark blue uniform, stocky alongside Bullock but upright. A scar from a knife wound, received when he had broken up a fight in a pub, ran from his ear to his chin and gave
him a sinister look that was totally misleading. He listened to Katy in his turn, then said, ‘We’ll need a warrant.’
An hour later he had his warrant and they were on their way. Katy and Matt shared one car with Formby, Bullock and the driver, while another car followed behind with a Sergeant Garrett, stout and red-faced, and four constables. The cars halted short of a corner and then Formby said, ‘That’s our street, just around the corner. Norgren’s house is halfway down. It’s a long terrace so there are no side doors, just front and back. I want two men round the back. Send them off now. We’ll give them a few minutes start then drive down.’
Bullock passed on the order and two constables set off. Then Formby’s driver said, ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but I was down here only yesterday and they’ve got all the road up.’
‘Damn!’ Formby got down and walked to the corner. It was a crisply clear day with a bright, blue sky which promised a frost come nightfall. He squinted against the glare of the low winter sun and saw the hole in the road, cutting it almost completely. A massive steam lorry was being loaded with rubble by two shovel wielding navvies. The lorry cut off what road was left so there was no way that the cars could get through. Formby cursed, turned back to the car and ordered, ‘Come on, all of you! We’ll have to go from here on foot.’ So he and his men, followed by Katy and Matt, turned the corner and started down the street towards the house in the middle.
The street comprised two long terraces, as Formby had said, of tall, old houses that had once been lived in by professionals, doctors and solicitors and the like. They had moved out to the suburbs and now the houses were tenements for the most part. Housewives stood gossiping at their doors with their shawls wrapped around them, making the most of the winter sunshine, despite the cold breeze from the sea that came with it. Children, the boys in ragged jerseys and shorts, the girls in white pinnies, swarmed back and forth across the road, playing games, or gathered about the hole in the road and the workmen, watching them curiously. Another little group stood around a barrel organ man as he wound the handle and played his tinkle-tankle tune: ‘You Made Me Love You.’ Katy’s heart thumped when she saw the urchins, the little girls among them. And she gasped when she saw one little blonde-haired lass, then turned it into a sigh when she saw it was not Louise. She had an awful fear that even at this late stage something could go wrong and she would not find Louise.
