Riptide

by John Lawton

  § 24

  One end of Edna Stilton’s kitchen was occupied by a vast round table, the other end by Edna Stilton. She stood in front of the cooking machine she called ‘me Aga’, stirred, grumbled and served, while her daughters scurried back and forth between the cooker and the table. Around the table a baffling array of faces greeted Cal, a serial chorus of ‘pleased to meet you, I’m sure’, and no amount of bonhomie from Stilton would make introduction or remembering any the easier for him.

  ‘My girls, Rose and Reenie.’

  Two women Cal put at about his own age-late twenties-looking like younger versions of their mother, smiled at him from the far side; a flutter of the eyelashes, a coy tilt of the head. One in an ATS uniform, the other, the coy one, in a maternity smock. Stilton worked his way clockwise round the table.

  ‘Tom. Our Rose’s husband.’

  A short man in a neat black suit-thinning hair, tight lines around the eyes-a good few years older than his wife.

  ‘Ministry of Works,’ he said, as though sharing a confidence. A limp handshake followed.

  ‘Our Mr Bell. Top floor front. Organist at the Gaumont cinema in the Haymarket, Mondays to Saturdays, and at St George’s-in-the-East, Limehouse, on Sundays.’

  A thin man, a neglected man, a threadbare man, leather elbow patches on an old tweed coat-his socks probably needed darning too. He reached over, held out his hand to Cal. A reedy voice-the perfect organist down to his larynx and tonsils.

  ‘I’m more of a Bach man than a Bing man,’ he said, straining for joviality.

  ‘And then there’s Maurice, our Reen’s husband. Pilot Officer Micklewhite.’

  A big man, as big as Stilton-all women marry their fathers? Cal had already forgotten which was Reen and which was Rose-a pale blue RAF battledress draped across the chair behind him, black braces and a blue shirt on which he’d popped the collar stud.

  ‘Based at Hornchurch,’ he said by way of explanation. He might just as well have said Timbuctoo. Only when he added, ‘So close, it might as well be home,’ did Cal draw the conclusion that Hornchurch must be somewhere near London.

  ‘Our Miss Greenlees. Our Joanie.’

  The woman blushed scarlet behind spectacles as thick as milk bottles.

  ‘First floor back. Clerk to the Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths, Finsbury Town Hall. So if you ever want to get married in a hurry, Mr Cormack, you know where to go.’

  Stilton hooted at his own joke. If it were possible the poor woman blushed the more-a female Mr Bell, spinsterly, spidery and forty. They were what some families might have called ‘paying guests’-though he could not conceive that his would need or use such a term-but to Stilton they were ‘the lodgers’.

  ‘The twins. Kevin and Trevor.’

  Cal shook hands with two young ratings in naval uniform. Short hair, ruddy skin, firm grips. On the back of the door above their heads, two flat-top blue Navy caps bearing the simple inscription ‘HMS Hood’.

  ‘Our Vera.’

  A big, bold, blonde young woman of twenty or so. No maidenly blushes, no flirtatious, fluttering eyelashes. A manly handshake, and a terse ‘take me as you find me’ tone of voice.

  ‘And last and least, our youngest-Terence.’

  A spotty seventeen-year-old.

  ‘Tel,’ the boy said. ‘And I’ll be enlisting next year.’

  From the far end of the room his mother spoke.

  ‘Over my dead body. I got four kids in uniform. That’s quite enough for one family.’

  Cal looked around the room. Mrs Stilton set a large pie in the centre of the table, and seated herself opposite her husband. Cal counted up. They were thirteen at table. Two lodgers, two sons-in-law, the Stiltons themselves, six children and only three of them in uniform. Surely she knew how many kids she had in uniform? But there was a fourteenth, unoccupied place. On the far side of Cal between young Tel and his father.

  ‘I’m not waiting,’ Stilton’s wife said. ‘She’ll be late for her own funeral, that one.’

  And no further explanation of ‘she’ was offered.

  Dishes circulated. A mess of hot cabbage. A bowl of butterbeans doused in oily margarine. A slice of pie.

  One of the boys in uniform reached for the dish.

  “Ands orf! Manners! We got guests. I don’t want you showing me up! Mr Cormack, do help yourself.’

  Mrs Stilton beamed at him, glared at Kev or Trev. Cal helped himself to a small portion of the as yet unnamed pie. Whatever it was, it smelled great.

  Kev and Trev duly served, one of them began to tear his piece of pie apart with knife and fork.

  ‘What’s up, son?’ his father asked.

  ‘What’s up? What’s up? I ain’t got no meat in my bit! That’s what’s up!’

  He and his twin looked accusingly at their mother.

  ‘No, you ain’t,’ she said.

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘You ain’t go no meat. And neither’s nobody else. It ain’t a pie with meat. It’s a pie without meat.’

  The bonhomie of paterfamilias that had threatened to set like rictus on Stilton’s face vanished as he prised up the crust of his portion and confirmed the bad news.

  ‘It’s called Woolton pie. There’s carrots and parsnips and a nice white sauce and lots of goodness.’

  ‘Goodness. Wot the bleedin’ ‘ell’s goodness? I want meat. What’s a bleedin’ pie without meat?’

  Mrs Stilton moved quickly for a big woman. She leaned across her daughter and son-in-law and whacked each of the twins across the backs of both hands with her wooden spoon. Fast as a tommy-gun.

  ‘Wossatfor?’

  ‘That’s for language-‘ow many times I have to tell you? We got guests. Mr Cormack don’t come here to hear you swear. Now eat up or put it back. ‘Cos it’s all you’re gettin’! And if you wanted meat you should have handed over your ration books like I asked you the day you both come ‘orne on leave. I spent half the afternoon down the butcher’s. Queuin’ in the Mile End Road. You know what I got? Quart o’ pound o’ bacon. That’s what I got.’

  The other twin, nursing a bruised knuckle and a grievance, spoke for the first time.

  ‘Woss wrong with bacon pie then?’

  ‘Bacon pie. Without eggs? I never ‘card of such a thing. No. Bacon’s for your dad’s breakfasts. He gets up every day at the crack o’ dawn and goes out to earn the money to keep this family together. You expect me to send ‘im orf without a good cooked breakfast inside ‘im? Course not. You eat your pie. Like I said. It’s full of goodness.’

  The repetition of ‘goodness’-a word in which none but Mrs Stilton seemed to believe-reduced the table to a silence. Pilot Officer Micklewhite broke it.

  ‘Will you be joining us, Captain Cormack?’

  ‘Joining you?’

  ‘The war,’ said Micklewhite. ‘Will the States be getting stuck in with us? Shoulder to shoulder?’

  ‘Nah. They’ll be late just like the last time,’ muttered one of the twins. A look from his father shut him up.

  ‘Manners, Maurice. Captain Cormack can’t be expected to answer questions like that.’

  Cal looked quickly around the table. Every man in the room, Vera too, was looking back at him. It didn’t look as though he could duck the question except by hiding behind Stilton’s intervention-but then he’d no wish to duck it, he’d heard it too often, it was time to take it at the flood.

  ‘It’s OK, Walter,’ he said. ‘I’m happy to answer. I can’t speak for America, I can only speak for myself. In the last week I’ve been asked the same question by complete strangers. A guy in the street, standing on Westminster Bridge. The tailor who made the suit I’m wearing. I said nothing. I rather wish now I’d spoken. England seems to need to know. I can’t say I blame England. But-I’m here. I’m in the war. I’m with you. Maybe not shoulder to shoulder. And right now not in uniform. But I’m here. As far as I’m concerned I’ve been fighting this war since I was posted to Europe in 1939. If you want mo to answe
r for my country-well, I guess I began by resenting the question-I was wrong and I don’t any more-but all the same, all you’ll get is my personal opinion.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘We’ll be in this war by Christmas.’

  Cal could scarcely believe it. They cheered and stomped. Everyone but the Stiltons themselves, who seemed baffled and bemused by the behaviour of their children, not quite sure if it was ‘manners’ or not. And as the hubbub died, one pair of hands clapping, and a figure in the doorway he had not seen before. A tall redhead with deep green eyes, clapping him fiercely and smiling ear to ear.

  ‘Well said,’ she said. ‘Whoever you are.’

  Cal rose, the only man in the room on his feet, while Edna Stilton scuttled back to the stove for a warm plate.

  ‘I already said. Be late for your own funeral, you will.’

  ‘My eldest,’ Stilton resumed his list. ‘Katherine.’

  The young woman advanced on Cal-a blueish-black uniform he couldn’t quite place. Sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve.

  ‘Kitty,’ she said. ‘Kitty Stilton.’

  After the motley array of Stilton daughters, nothing had prepared him for the woman he now met. She put her sisters in the shade.

  ‘Calvin Cormack,’ he said softly.

  She unbuttoned her tunic and threw it onto a chair behind them. She smoothed down her skirt, making Cal acutely conscious of her figure. Edged her way between Cal and her father.

  ‘Inch up, Dad. I’m not sitting next to Tel. He’ll pester me to death.’

  Tel protested. She ruffled his hair. He squirmed. Stilton moved up and made room for her. She and Cal sat down together. Edna Stilton stuck a plate in front of her.

  ‘Woolton pie,’ she said, almost as a warning.

  ‘Great,’ said Kitty, not even looking at it.

  Cal heard the table dissolve into half a dozen conversations and felt relieved that he was no longer their focus. Kitty Stilton chatted to her father, and as her mother gathered up plates from the first course and dished out bowls for the next, she turned to him and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘What’s the uniform you say you’re not wearing?’

  ‘United States Army. I’m a regular. A captain. And you?’

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ve seen it. I just can’t place the uniform. I can’t even tell if it’s blue or black. Are you a Wren?’

  She laughed, a hugely engaging laugh, devoid of mockery, genuinely amused that he had to ask.

  ‘I’m a copper. A sergeant in the Met. Didn’t my old man tell you?’

  ‘I’m sure he’d’ve gotten round to it.’

  ‘And there was I thinking he boasted about me to every eligible man he met.’

  She paused, glanced down at the unadorned fingers of Cal’s hands.

  ‘And you are eligible, aren’t you?’

  And, not waiting for an answer, got up to help her mother serve.

  Cal had a friend in Zurich who pointedly removed his wedding band when he went out to pick up women. It left a ring of paler skin on his finger as blatant as a tattoo-it all but screamed ‘married’-and he never failed to score. Cal could not imagine putting on a wedding band, but then he could not imagine anyone who had put one on ever wanting to take it off.

  Kitty returned to the table, plonked down what appeared to be a hazard to shipping in off-white, dotted with black spots that could be raisins or detonators.

  ‘Right,’ said Edna Stilton. ‘You know what else I got at the butcher’s? Suet. That’s what I got. I got the last bit o’ suet in the shop. So you lot get spotted dick. Only watch out for the sultanas, on account of I’ve had ‘em in the cupboard since 1932. You break a tooth, you’ve only yourself to blame.’

  From the look on the face of every man present-Stilton sat with his spoon upright in his fist; ‘those about to eat salute you’-Cal was aware that, whatever it amounted to, spotted dick was to be regarded and received as a treat.

  Cal put it down to the length of the evening-the light if somewhat chilly May nights. Whilst he would gladly have accepted that the social day was over and gone back to his hotel, the Stiltons would not hear of it. They adjourned to an upstairs room. Turned on the radio.

  ‘You can’t go now,’ they all seemed to protest in unison. ‘Billy Cotton’s on the wireless.’

  This meant nothing to him. A band Cal privately thought not a patch on Benny Goodman or Dnke Ellington piped up and the twins took turns twirling a blushing but unprotesting Miss Greenlees across the carpet. She was a far better dancer than either of them, as she proved when Tom-from-the-Ministry took their place and matched her skills with his. No one involved him in the dance, no one ‘asked’ him to dance or hinted that he should ask any one of the endless Stilton daughters. Perhaps they’d reached the boundary of good manners-he would have hated to do it but could scarcely see a way to say no. Instead he listened to Edna Stilton regale him with the lives of absent lodgers. Her house, it seemed, had always had a floating population; several generations of clerks, librarians and shop girls had passed through. An extended, inconstant family.

  ‘O’ course this time last year there was rooms going begging. Nobody wanted ‘em. Everybody’d packed their kiddies off to the country. But we lost so many houses since the Blitz started that a good room’s become hard to find again. Mr Bell-he lodged at number thirty-eight with Mrs Wisby. Got bombed out. We took him in when old Mr Trewin went to live with his daughter in Weston-super-Mare…’

  Cal stopped listening. Stilton had lit up his pipe and appeared to be in a huddle with his daughter Kitty. Cal guessed from the intent look on their faces that they were discussing work. He could hear nothing in the smothering cloud of music and laughter of what they were saying, but when Stilton looked right at him he saw his chance and took it.

  ‘I think I should go now, Walter. It’s been a long day.’

  Stilton got up, tapped out his pipe on the side of the fireplace.

  ‘Then I’ll run you back.’

  ‘No. It’s OK. I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘Not in this neck o’ the woods you won’t. Like I said, I’ll run you up West.’

  Kitty was looking at Cal-still perched on the edge of her father’s armchair, one arm stretched out along the back, one leg swinging gently.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad. I can give Mr Cormack a lift. No bother,’ she said.

  Stilton protested, ‘He doesn’t want to ride-‘

  She cut him short. ‘Dad, I’m going home to Covent Garden. It’s hardly out of my way, is it?’

  Then she turned to Cal.

  ‘Up West? What hotel you in? Claridge’s? All the Yanks is in Claridge’s.’

  Only when she reached down a black motorcycle helmet from the hallstand did Cal realise the exactitude of the word ‘ride’. But he was trapped now, in the web of his own sense of ‘manners’. He said his goodbyes-thanked the Stiltons for their hospitality and followed Kitty into the night. A large Ariel motorcycle-5OOcc at least-was leaning on its stand at the kerb. Kitty hitched up her skirt.

  ‘Let me kick ‘er up, then you hop on behind. You ever ridden pillion?’

  His ‘no’ was drowned out as she leapt bodily off the ground to land on the kickstart, and the bike fired up.

  ‘You put yer arms ‘round me waist! You got that?’

  Cal did as he was told, stretched a leg over the pillion seat and slid on behind her, wondering, as she yelled ‘tighter’, if this was as dangerous a venture as she seemed to think it was.

  Kitty had none of her father’s sense of caution. It was now pitch dark, but she throttled up the motorbike and roared through the City of London at sixty miles an hour. Past the Bank of England, over Holborn Viaduct, to streak along Oxford Street before zigzagging across Hanover Square to Claridge’s.

  When she finally stopped Cal’s legs were shaking, his fingers were numb, and he felt his hair must be standing on end like Elsa Lancheste
r’s in The Bride of Frankenstein.

  He hadn’t a clue what to say to this woman. Southern manners took over, he offered her a frozen hand and said, ‘It’s been a pleasure.’

  ‘I do like a feller wot can talk posh,’ she said, and had to grin before he realised she was taking the mickey.

  ‘You and my dad’ll be working together then?’

  ‘I guess we will.’

  ‘Then we could be havin’ a lot more “pleasure”.’

  She kicked the bike back to life. Cal headed for the door, the elevator and bed.

  He flicked on the bathroom light and pulled the door three-quarters shut so that a sliver of light cut across the bedroom carpet. Just enough light to see what he was doing. If the Germans could spot that maybe they’d earn the shot. He drew back the curtains onto a moonless, cloudy night. Threw off his jacket, loosened his tie and wished half-heartedly for a bottle of bourbon. It had been another day in which he had got nowhere. Some part of him wished for the spectacular distraction of an air raid, and the part of him that furnished guilt for all occasions stepped on this as though upon a cigarette butt tossed into the gutter.

  There came a gentle tapping on his door, and when he opened it there stood Kitty Stilton, helmet in one hand, a large white envelope in the other.

  ‘Dispatch for Captain Cormack,’ she said and grinned.

  ‘Is that what you told them downstairs?’

  ‘Yeah. Actually it’s yesterday’s Evening News stuffed inside an old envelope. But Claridge’s ain’t the sort of hotel where they let a man stroll in with a strange woman.’

  ‘Even one in uniform?’

  ‘I might not always be in uniform. Now-you goin’ to ask me in, or do I have to stand here all night?’

  Cal swung back the door. Closed it behind her. She dropped the envelope and helmet on an armchair, stood in the window for a second, looking out as he had done.

  ‘It’s a bad habit,’ he tried to explain.

  She turned, her face entirely in the shadows-visible only from the buttons on her tunic, downwards.

  ‘Wot is?’

  ‘Looking out for the planes. Expecting to see them. Wanting to see them.’