Small Change 03: Half A Crown

by Jo Walton

  She hadn’t changed a bit. She still had the dyed red hair, over-painted face, and mutton-dressed-as-lamb look she’d had ten years before when my aunt Ciss had taken me there and persuaded her to agree to let Uncle Carmichael have me. She didn’t recognize me at all, and I could see her coming to the same conclusion as the policeman and the man in the pub in Golders Green. “Out,” she said. “It’s after closing time.”

  “Mum,” I said. “It’s me, Elvira.”

  She stopped still and went pale beneath her makeup. “You never,” she said. “All grown-up. I thought they was going to make you into a lady.”

  “They have been,” I said. “But I’m in trouble.”

  “Always the same,” she said, with a look at my waistline. “And I’m the only one you could think of who could help? Well, how far along are you?”

  “Not that kind of trouble,” I said, blushing, thinking of poor Betsy.

  She frowned, as if the other had been at least comprehensible. The man behind the bar raised an eyebrow and took a step towards us, and she waved him away. “Did your Auntie Ciss send you?”

  “She gave me your address, so I could send a Christmas card,” I said. “But she didn’t send me.”

  “You always have remembered the Christmas cards,” she said, unbending a little. “Even one from the Alps. Where’s that our Elvira’s got to now, Germany, I asked Raymond, and he looked at the stamps and said no, Switzerland.”

  “That’s right, I was in finishing school there,” I said.

  “So what do you want with me now?” she asked. “What sort of trouble are you in, anyway?”

  “Police trouble,” I said.

  “But your dad was police, and your new uncle too,” she said.

  “He’s in trouble too,” I said. “I just need somewhere to hide for a couple of days, Mum. If you have a room or anything. They won’t be looking for me here.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Nothing,” I said, but she looked at me disbelievingly.

  “What’s he done, then, your so-called uncle?”

  I didn’t want to tell her he was involved with rescuing Jews. She was the one who had first told me they were dirty and ate babies. “Butted heads with another policeman,” I said. “It’ll all be sorted soon. Can I stay here?”

  “Of course you can,” she said. “I was just overset for a minute, that’s all. Come on and meet Raymond.” She took my arm and I followed her to the bar. Raymond was older than my mother, but unlike her made no attempt to disguise it. He had meaty forearms, a beer belly, and no hair at all. “Raymond, this is my little girl, my Elvira that I’ve told you about.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, putting out my hand.

  “I saw the likeness as soon as she came in,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it enthusiastically. “She’s not quite as pretty, Irene, but I can definitely see you in her.” He seemed appallingly sincere.

  “Drink up now!” my mother suddenly bellowed. “Let’s have your glasses!”

  “When they’re gone, we can open a bottle of champagne for the prodigal daughter,” Raymond said.

  “And you can tell us all about being made into a lady,” my mother added.

  I yawned.

  26

  Carmichael stood outside the Moon Under Water looking down at the Thames, which was oozing along in its usual mud-brown way, under the light evening rain, taking the echoes of streetlights and neon lights and reflecting them back as a kind of diffused glow. There was nothing on the South Bank to catch the eye, except Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London pied-à-terre. A boat hooted mournfully somewhere out of sight. He might just as well throw himself in the river as carry on without Jack. He touched the side of his jaw. Throwing himself in the river wasn’t the sure route to death his tooth could provide. Carmichael considered suicide calmly for a moment. He could break out the tooth and die like Jack, without betraying anyone, without, or so the doctor had promised, very much pain. There’d be no chance that he’d betray the Inner Watch, or anyone. Everything could go on without him. Or he could shoot himself. He had the little pistol in his pocket.

  The only reason he could find that made it worth struggling on was Elvira. If he left London immediately he could get in touch with Jacobson and have him send her to join him. He might not be able to give her Oxford, but surely there were universities in Canada or Australia? He had enough money, in untraceable securities, to pay for her education. He couldn’t imagine what he could do himself, how he would live, but he could give Elvira that, in return for having endangered her, and thought of sacrificing her. The education was what she cared about, and he could give her that, even if it wasn’t Oxford. Besides, he was afraid to die, even if living offered nothing to go on for. He stared out across the river at the hazed jewels that marked the streets of the South Bank and loathed himself. After a while he started to walk.

  The thing Carmichael and Sir Guy had both forgotten about getting out of London quickly was Ogilvie’s extra restrictions around Central London for the procession and opening of the peace conference. Carmichael remembered them just as he was about to run into one of the checkpoints. His false identity cards were good, but he was afraid of being searched with so many of them on him. Besides, he might well be recognized by any random Watchman. He was probably safe for the night, with Normanby expecting a call in the morning about exchanging Jack for Elvira, but he wasn’t sure he’d be safe trying to leave London. If he waited he could leave London on Thursday, when the extra checkpoints were gone, and take Elvira with him.

  He turned away from the checkpoint and went by Underground to Victoria Station. He wandered out into the mean rundown side-streets in the Pimlico direction. The houses there had once been grand eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century mansions. Time had not been kind to them—they were shabby now and down at heel, their stucco peeling, either subdivided into lodging houses or eking out a living as rundown hotels. It was far easier to be anonymous here than in a flophouse, where he would be conspicuous because he didn’t belong. Here he could be one more failing commercial traveler, one more gray man who nobody cared about.

  Although London was bulging with delegates for the conference, most of these hotels had signs reading VACANCY. Carmichael knocked at a door at random. It was opened by a cheerless woman in a print pinafore. “Yes?” she asked, listlessly, pushing back a strand of pale brown hair.

  “Do you have a room for a couple of nights?” Carmichael asked.

  “Yes,” she said, and stood aside. He took this as an invitation and followed her inside. The hall had a smell of old kippers and cabbage, and the room she showed him was half underground and painted dark gold. He paid her for two nights in advance, and she handed him the obligatory police form to fill in. She checked it half-heartedly against his false card, looking from the picture to him. She looked again, and showed a first faint flicker of interest. “Have you been ill?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Carmichael said at once. “My glands. I lost nearly a month of work, I’ll never make it up, and I don’t know how we’re going to pay the doctor’s bills.”

  “My sister suffers terrible with her glands,” she said, handing back the card. “You want to drink hot milk and build yourself up.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. Do you have some?”

  “Me?” she asked, sounding offended, and went out, leaving the door open. “Bathroom’s down the hall, and the lav next to it, if you want it.”

  If he wanted it, he thought, outraged, and then the outrage, the pleasure of having convinced her of his illness, and the desire for hot milk all disappeared into the bleakness of being alive in a world that had no Jack in it. He sank down on the bed, and sat there staring at a picture of a cross-eyed cat without seeing it. After a long time, he got up and closed the door. He took his coat off, carefully folded it up, and put it under the thin pillow. Locking the door carefully behind him, he went down the hall to use the toilet. Whe
n he came back he locked the door again, undressed, and turned out the electric light, deploring without really taking in the gold-tasseled shade. He got into bed and lay there for a while in the darkness. Eventually, he wept, and was shaken with a storm of silent weeping. At last he fell asleep, like falling down a well.

  He woke with the dawn and lay watching the piece of window at street level, far above his head, grow gray, then pink, then begin to darken periodically with the feet of early risers. He used the bathroom, running into an Indian in the hall and muttering good morning. He wondered if the man was here for the conference. India was due for Dominion status next year, if all went well. He dressed, pulled on his coat, and went out to find a cheap greasy breakfast in a corner café. The shop on Ambrose Street wouldn’t open until ten, so there was nothing he could do until then. He couldn’t call Jacobson, it was his Passover, and he’d been told never to telephone on Saturdays or holidays unless it was an emergency. This wasn’t an emergency, quite. Jack hadn’t told them anything, and Elvira should be safe enough where she was for a day or two.

  The appalling breakfast (tea strong enough to go into the wrestling ring, bacon as limp as a face-flannel, fried eggs swimming in bacon fat, a burst sausage, an oozing tinned tomato, and two slices of cold toast) nevertheless did him good. It reminded him of the time when he had been an inspector for Scotland Yard and had no more to worry about than solving a case. He ached for a case to solve, a puzzle, a mystery to fit together, Sergeant Royston at his side and Jack waiting at home to hear about it when it was over.

  He walked to Ambrose Street, through the early morning streets of London. He saw shops opening their blinds, and pale office workers hurrying from the Underground to work. He saw queues at bus stops disappearing into scarlet buses, which simultaneously disgorged a load of passengers who scattered onto the streets. The sun was shining and the air was clear after the rain. He saw hurrying businessmen clutching their bowler hats as a breeze came off the river. A black taxi honked its horn impatiently. In Covent Garden, where the fruit and flower market was almost over for the day, he stood for a while and watched a juggler tossing five balls in a complicated pattern, and at last gave him half a crown when he moved on. London was all around him, the familiar, ever-changing kaleidoscope of London. And there, in the pattern, belonging, was a helmeted bobby walking his beat, in blue uniform and silver buttons.

  Carmichael, who did not belong and did not want to be seen, ducked into a newsagent and bought a copy of the Times. He sat in another corner café to read it, among the costermongers of Covent Garden, who were having their lunch. He drank Earl Grey tea, and hid behind his newspaper.

  “Protests Spreading” read the headline. “Fuhrer Arrives Safely in Britain.” Carmichael read the paper carefully, but there was no mention of his fall, or Elvira’s rescue, or Jack’s death. He hadn’t really expected that there would be. He was interested to read of a protest against death camps in France. Marshal Desjardins had responded that he would have to look into the question.

  Carmichael folded the paper up and left it on the table. He walked on, through a city now thoroughly awake, to Ambrose Street.

  Although he wouldn’t be recognized, he knew the code phrases, and felt confident he could soon be reunited with Elvira. Then they would both have to wait until Thursday and then—the simplest way out of the country was to take the boat-train from Paddington to Ireland. From Ireland, which maintained a prickly nose-thumbing independence from the practice and policies of the rest of Europe, it would be possible to go farther. They could take ship, or fly, to Canada. Jack had wanted to go to New Zealand, Carmichael remembered, and stopped, caught between two strides by a gale of grief. He blew his nose, that acceptable English substitute for emotion, and kept walking. They should have gone as soon as they knew Elvira was arrested. He should have told Jack as soon as Elvira was safe, to give him the courage to hold on until he could have been rescued in his turn. He should have gone years ago, as soon as they had the false papers. Jack had persuaded him to stay, to keep on helping.

  When he turned onto Ambrose Street he recognized the stakeout at once. The unmarked cars, the men waiting, inconspicuously watching the shop, were unmistakable. He kept on walking, not slowing his stride at all, right through and past them, and on, his heart beating hard against his chest. How had they found Ambrose Street? Had Collins talked? Had that been what Elvira had known and told them—though how could she have? It wasn’t possible. Had they followed them, after all, yesterday? That was the most plausible explanation. How much did they know, how much had they found, was Elvira still safe, or in their hands? He kept walking, regrets replaced by unanswerable questions.

  He could track Elvira no farther without help. He had never known the details of the safe houses, beyond Ambrose Street, the gateway. If Penn-Barkis had Ambrose Street he had a great deal, but not everything. They knew where to send people, they had a system of safe houses in London—these were lost, none of them could be considered safe any longer. But they wouldn’t have the rest of it, the mechanism for getting them out of the country, the false papers, the connections with the Inner Watch, all of that would still be safe, unless Collins had talked, or one of the other Inner Watchmen. He needed to call Jacobson. It was an emergency now.

  He walked on, quickly, trying to look like someone with somewhere to be, late for an appointment. He tried not to feel eyes on his back as he turned the corner and made his way into the anonymity of other streets. He walked past three red telephone boxes and went into the fourth, one of a pair standing outside the gates of a little park. He dialed Jacobson’s number. He could see the rusting iron railings dividing the road from the trees, and the little square of grass. The telephone rang and rang, with no reply. At last he gave up and dialed again. This time it was picked up on the first ring, and he had trouble pressing button B and getting his pennies inserted in time.

  “Jacobson, it’s me, Carmichael,” he said.

  “Is this call urgent?” Jacobson asked.

  “Yes, it is,” Carmichael said. “Jack’s been arrested, and he’s used his tooth. And there’s more, worse, I don’t want to tell you on the telephone. Can you meet me?”

  There was a brief hesitation. “I’ll meet you this afternoon. Where are you?”

  “I’ll meet you in Green Park,” he said. “By the tube station, on one of the benches. Three o’clock?”

  “All right,” Jacobson said.

  For now, Carmichael thought, leaving the telephone box, he’d work on the other end of the problem. With any luck he and Elvira would be able to just buy tickets from Paddington to Rosslare, but as luck seemed not to be going his way, he wanted a backup plan.

  He took the Underground to Waterloo, feeling every casual glance an assault. There was a pub here, beside the bridge, a red brick Edwardian pub with grubby stained glass in the windows and an Irish landlady, like hundreds of others all over London. Its name was the Duke of Wellington, and it was known as the Duke’s Head. There was nobody watching outside it, at least nobody Carmichael could see. He walked past on the other side of the road, then crossed back and went in. It was just open, the fire in the grate was smoking and there were no customers. The landlady was wiping down the bar with a striped yellow cloth. “Morning, Breda,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s you, is it?” the landlady replied, looking up. She was about Carmichael’s own age, closing on forty, and he had known her for a long time. “Trouble? Or were you looking for himself? Because he’s over the water, as you should know.”

  “He’s not back yet?” Carmichael asked, casually. “I heard it all went well.”

  “Aye, that’s what I heard too, and there’s nothing to go wrong now, as he’s doing nothing against the law on that side. He’s just stopping on a day or two to see his sister’s boy get wed.” Breda stopped mopping the bar and straightened up. “Shall I pour you a drink?”

  “I’d prefer a cup of tea,” Carmichael said. “China, if you have it, but anything wil
l do.”

  “I don’t know what you want to go muddling up your insides with that stuff for” she said. “Beer’s much better for you. But I’ll put the kettle on. Give me a shout if anyone comes in and wants serving.”

  Nobody came in. Carmichael poked the fire, then took a seat at the bar. Breda came out with a steaming mug of tea. “Thank you,” Carmichael said.

  “No milk, that’s right, isn’t it? Do you want some lemon? I’ve got some cut up for putting in G and Ts.”

  “I’ll have a slice if it’s no trouble,” Carmichael said. She passed him a slice and he dropped it into the mug. Breda settled down on the other side of the bar. “Now, as you’ve guessed, it’s himself I wanted. I am in trouble, bad trouble, and maybe you’ll have to go slow on all of this business and keep your heads down. In any case, you’ll be seeing Mr. Jacobson and not me, because I have to get out.”

  “That is bad,” Breda said. “Do you want to lay low here for a bit before you scarper?”

  “I’d love to, but I don’t want to put you at risk. What I might need is a ride to the Republic, for me and my niece. It might be safer that way.”

  “Well, you know he’d be glad to oblige, any time, but not this week. His nephew’s getting married on Saturday, and of course he’s staying over for Easter, so he won’t be back until next Wednesday. I do have a friend who might be able to help you, though.”

  “Someone who helps you with all this?” Carmichael asked.

  “Not exactly. He’s an Irishman—” She hesitated. “He’s someone I used to know years ago, before I got into this with you. In fact, my mother was his nanny, back before I was born, and I’ve known him since I was born and he was six years old. He might have his own ways in and out of England. I say might, but I know he does. He’s a bit of a hell-raiser, to tell the truth.”