The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  And Mr Stephens put his head back and gasped as though he had been hurt, but he didn’t let go.

  The umbrella, which until a moment ago had lain on a fallen palm frond, arced through the heavy darkness with the force of a hammer, handle first, and connected with Mr Stephens’s temple, making a sickening thud. Mr Stephens crumpled and fell sideways.

  Behind him stood Harriet, the pointy end of the umbrella still in her hands.

  On the ground Mr Stephens lay quite still and his eyes gazed up at her, reflecting the light of the moon. Harriet stepped back in alarm. But the eyes didn’t follow her.

  She dropped the umbrella and grabbed Freddie’s hand, pulling him to his feet, and together they ran blindly through the garden and emerged suddenly onto the well-lit esplanade not far from the big hotel.

  Freddie was hysterical, alternately sobbing and trying to sit down on the pavement and refusing to move. But there was no time for this. They must get away!

  Half dragging, half carrying Freddie, she made for the big black silhouette ahead of them that must be the Gateway. They reached the Gateway at last, somehow, and there beyond it was the Tiberius! It was flooded in light. And suddenly there were people, glorious, wonderful busy people all around! They could get lost in all the people and no one would ever find them. Officials from the ship strode about the quayside barking orders. Coolies scurried about loading on the last of the luggage, and last-minute passengers hurried importantly up the gangway.

  Harriet had their papers—Mr Stephens had entrusted her with them when they had first boarded the ship. Now she pulled them out and showed them to the official at the top of the gangway. The official looked at them both with a long frown and made an agonising show of inspecting the papers, humming and hah-ing before finally announcing, ‘Everything looks to be in order, miss. Welcome aboard.’ Then he had frowned again. ‘Everything all right? What’s wrong with the little chap?’

  ‘We’re leaving our parents to go to school in England,’ Harriet had replied, the words already rehearsed in her head.

  The official had nodded. ‘Yes, we get a lot of that. Chin up, young man; don’t want your big sister to think you’re a sissy, do you?’

  Freddie hadn’t replied and it was debatable he had even heard the man’s words.

  There were other passengers waiting to board and Harriet dragged Freddie to their cabin. People were looking at them, she knew, but it didn’t matter. She closed and locked the door behind them and finally let Freddie go. For a moment she let him fall as she leant against the door, catching her breath and trying to think. She must think.

  But Freddie was hysterical.

  She picked him up and put him on the bed, stroking his head.

  ‘Freddie, stop! Please stop, it’s fine now. We’re safe, we’re on the ship, in our cabin. There’s no one here. We’re safe!’

  Eventually he began to calm down and then, in a broken, sobbing voice he spoke.

  ‘I didn’t w-want to do it, b-but he said Father would be angry with me if I r-refused. He said Father would be angry if I didn’t do w-whatever he said!’

  Harriet held him tightly and listened and her heart seemed to turn black with hatred.

  ‘He was lying, Freddie. Father wouldn’t want you to do that. Father would be very, very angry with Mr Stephens if he knew. He was a bad, bad man. An evil man. He lied to you.’

  ‘I didn’t want to do it!’ sobbed Freddie, though more quietly now. ‘I thought Father would be angry with me.’

  ‘I know. But it’s safe now. Mr Stephens will never hurt you again.’ She placed a finger beneath his chin and lifted his head up, looking at him silently for a moment, then she made herself smile. ‘And if anyone asks, Mr Stephens took us back to the ship, then left us. That was the last time we saw him, wasn’t it?’

  Freddie listened, then he nodded silently.

  Up on the deck she could hear the shouts from the sailors as the gangway was removed and mooring ropes untied. The ship’s funnel boomed loudly and repeatedly. Above them the passengers crowded to the ship’s deck to cheer and wave goodbye to friends and family.

  Think, she must think. Mr Stephens wouldn’t return to Jhelum. Father and Mother would be worried. ‘You can always send a telegram,’ Father had said, ‘in an emergency.’

  Well, this was an emergency, though Father would never know about it.

  She opened the drawers in the little writing desk and found a telegram form and after a number of false starts wrote: ‘SAFELY ABOARD STOP LOVE TO BOTH STOP H AND F STOP.’

  Then she pulled out a sheet of writing paper and began her letter.

  Dearest Mother and Father,

  I hope you are both well and that Mother is feeling much better. I am writing from the cabin of the Tiberius as it disembarks. A lot of people are up on deck waving and cheering and dear Mr Stephens is standing at the dockside waving to us. He was so kind to bring us here and he looked after both Freddie and I most attentively …

  Three or four months after Father’s letter announcing their Mother’s death she had received a second letter from Father, this time relating the sad death of dear Mr Stephens. He had, it appeared, never made it back to Jhelum, but had been brutally murdered in a park in Bombay by person or persons unknown later that same night—presumably only hours after seeing the children off at the quayside. It was a sad and tragic loss, Father had observed. A young man with such potential, so cruelly struck down in the prime of his life. He would be sadly missed. His replacement, a Mr Downey, had arrived the previous week, and was already showing himself to be a fine worker.

  They had never returned to India, she or Freddie.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  JUNE 1953

  ‘Is this him?’

  A police inspector sporting a seedy little moustache and a rather cheap raincoat asked this question, and he looked at Harriet rather than at the figure lying motionless on the bed.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Harriet.

  She wanted to add, Yes, this is my brother, but the words stuck fast in her throat.

  A small glass pill bottle lay empty on the bed, another larger bottle still with an inch or so of some clear spirit in it was on the floor beside the bed. There were no signs of violence, no blood. Just a man lying on a bed. He could be asleep or drunk.

  ‘There’s a note,’ said the policeman. He handed her a small unsealed envelope. ‘Looks pretty straightforward—well, as far as these things ever are.’ He paused to frown as though picking his words carefully. ‘There’ll be an inquest of course. Standard procedure. Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The policeman waited. For what, it was hard to tell. Questions, perhaps? For her to leave?

  Harriet found that she had the envelope in her hand. She looked down at it. Her name was written on the envelope with a cheap biro in Freddie’s flamboyant scribble: Mrs Harriet Wallis, 83 Athelstan Gardens, SW1. And so they had found her, really, with no trouble at all. But how had they found him? The policeman had said something about a neighbour. Freddie had lain here, it seemed, since last night. Dead some hours. He must have done it soon after she had left him the previous evening.

  She swayed and the room lurched unexpectedly. She felt behind her for a wall, a chair.

  ‘Here, let me help you,’ said the policeman, springing over with sudden agility to take her elbow. ‘There we are,’ and he lowered her onto a chair. ‘Mullins, where’s that tea? Come on!’

  He called out to a young WPC who was moving about in the kitchen. Then he turned back to Harriet and produced a kind and unlikely smile.

  ‘Takes people this way sometimes,’ he said and patted her hand.

  Harriet watched as the police inspector’s hand patted hers and she could see that his fingers touched hers and yet she felt nothing. It was as though he were touching some other person’s hand.

  ‘I take it the gentleman wasn’t married?’ he asked after a moment.

  The room slowly came back into f
ocus and she looked into the enquiring eyes of the policeman with the seedy moustache.

  ‘No. No, he wasn’t married. He never married.’

  And now he never would. Oddly, her voice sounded normal. She didn’t want it to sound normal.

  ‘And when was it you last saw Mr Paget?’

  ‘Last night. I was here last night.’

  ‘Oh.’ The inspector seemed surprised. Had he suspected they weren’t close, she and Freddie? That his family had deserted him? Was that what his look implied? Or was he wondering why she had noticed nothing amiss, had done nothing to prevent this happening? And why had she noticed nothing amiss? Why had she done nothing to prevent this happening?

  The WPC emerged bearing a cup and saucer.

  ‘Ah, here we are, then,’ observed the inspector approvingly. ‘Good and hot and plenty of sugar.’

  The WPC handed Harriet the tea with a sympathetic smile. No doubt they were trained in such things. No doubt this was as routine to them as a dinner party was to her. She held out her hand automatically and let the saucer rest on her lap. They seemed to expect her to drink it, so she put the rim of the cup to her lips and let the hot liquid seep over her tongue. It was sweet and milky and her tongue recoiled, but it was easier to drink than to think or to speak.

  ‘Ambulance is here,’ called the WPC—Mullins—who had gone to the window and lifted the net curtain. She crossed to the door and opened it and went out.

  ‘We’ll let them get on with it in peace, shall we?’ said the inspector, and he helped her up and deftly led her through to the tiny kitchenette and pushed the door shut. They sat down on two vinyl-covered stools before a mean-looking table with a cracked yellow Formica surface.

  ‘Lived alone, did he, Mr Paget?’

  She tried to think. ‘Yes, yes, he lived alone.’ She wanted to add, this is not his normal home. This squalid, this horrid little bed-sit is only temporary. But it wasn’t true, this was Freddie’s home. She put the tea cup to her lips and let the revolting liquid scald her tongue and her throat.

  The inspector nodded, then stood up, though he had been seated for less than a minute. ‘Well. I’ll leave you to it for a little while. Won’t be long.’

  For a moment it seemed that he would actually pat her knee, but he appeared to think better of it and left the room.

  There was the letter in the unsealed envelope. Harriet stared at it and what—what?—could a note possibly say to explain this, to excuse this? Her fingers reached into the envelope and pulled out a single small sheet of plain, un-headed note paper, the sort one purchased cheaply at a stationer’s and wrote hurried thank-you notes on to the man who had pruned your roses or the lady who had done the flowers at the church.

  ‘Sorry, old girl. It just didn’t seem worth the bother anymore.’

  And that was the explanation, the excuse. The reason. Just this and nothing more.

  She felt a moment of fury so intense the room went red and then black. But it faded as abruptly as it had appeared. Of course that was the reason, and what better reason was there? It just didn’t seem worth the bother anymore.

  There were noises from the other side of the door—men’s voices, muted, respectful of her presence. A thump, a door banging open against the wall. Freddie, being manhandled out of his flat by strangers. Taken—where?

  Simon. Someone needed to tell Simon. Simon was at the Palace. It was the day of the Coronation.

  The door opened and the police inspector came in with a sympathetic smile.

  ‘There now, all done,’ he announced as though talking to a child. ‘They’ll take him to the mortuary. Like I said, there’ll have to be an inquest. Just routine. And I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to pop down to the station and do some paperwork.’ He glanced discreetly at his watch. ‘But not today. It can wait till tomorrow.’

  Indeed, since today was the day of the Coronation.

  ‘I’ll get Mullins here to drop you back home. Mr Wallis at home, is he?’

  Was he? She tried to think. She nodded.

  ‘Might be an idea to take Mr Paget’s papers and valuables with you, Mrs Wallis. Once folk see a place is vacant—well, in this area you can’t be too careful, in my experience. I’ll give you a moment or two to gather his things together.’ And he backed discreetly out.

  A moment or two? Was that how long it would take to gather Freddie’s papers and valuables? To pack up a man’s life? And what papers did Freddie have? What valuables did you have when you lived in a bed-sit off the Marylebone Road?

  She found them in a drawer in the little desk beside the bed, a tangle of old ration books and void clothing coupons and working permits for other countries; his birth certificate, folded and creased; a passport in the name of some other man entirely. Some coins—Canadian and English. A batch of dog-eared photographs of young men in khaki in the desert, with a gun, a tank, seen casually in the background, the names and dates scribbled on the back and beginning to fade. A single payslip from Home Counties Equity. A typed letter with the Home Counties address at the top and Nobby Caruthers’s name at the bottom informing Mr Paget that certain information concerning his past had come to light and that, in view of this, Home Counties regretted they were unable to continue Mr Paget’s employment. And in the margin, written in pencil in angry capitals, the single word, heavily underlined: WALLIS?

  Wallis. Herself? Or Cecil? But the letter of dismissal had come from Nobby. Certain information had come to light. How did one check up on a man’s military service record anyway? They had not discussed it. She had never asked Freddie how they, his new employer, could know, had found out his secret. Could one simply enquire at the Ministry of Defence? Did the Ministry give out that sort of information? Surely an employer could only find out if someone informed them?

  ‘Mrs Wallis?’

  The WPC stood respectfully in the doorway. The girl was in uniform, her heavy A-line skirt cruelly unfashionable, the hat flattening her perm. She looked too young to have left school and yet here she was, waiting to drive Harriet home in a police vehicle.

  ‘We’ll lock up, shall we? Just to be on the safe side,’ and the girl pulled the front door shut behind them and firmly locked it, testing the door handle to make sure. Then she handed Harriet the key. ‘You’d better take charge of this till you decide what to do with it.’

  What would she do with it? A squalid bed-sit off the Marylebone Road where Freddie had died. She had no idea who owned the building, who the landlord was. She would give the key to Simon.

  Simon. Someone would have to tell Simon.

  WALLIS, written in angry pencil and heavily underlined, over and over again.

  ‘All right, Mrs Wallis?’

  The girl was peering at her, a hand out to help, but reluctant to make contact.

  The journey back was long and convoluted. They appeared to be heading west through Paddington and Bayswater in an attempt to avoid the congestion of crowds around Hyde Park and it was a nightmare of stopping and starting and swerving.

  ‘What a day for it,’ observed the WPC, waiting patiently at the lights as hordes of onlookers swarmed across Bayswater Road and headed into the park. Whether she meant what a day for the Coronation or what a day for a suicide was unclear.

  ‘This is you, isn’t it?’ she said at last, turning into Athelstan Gardens. Harriet nodded.

  ‘Number 83. Towards the end.’

  Above them the clouds thinned and a faint streak of sunshine crept across the garden and over the strings of bunting.

  ‘There’s someone home, is there, Mrs Wallis? Your husband?’

  Her husband? Yes, he was at home; they were all at home.

  She got out of the car, thanked the woman and let herself into the house. The WPC in the car waited outside for a time and Harriet stood in the hallway until she could see the car drive away.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  JUNE 1953

  ‘Corbett? Owen Corbett?’

  Cecil Wallis appeared to strain e
very muscle in an effort to remember. Jean could see the tendons stretched taut in his face, the tiny beads of moisture that had burst out on his forehead and upper lip. His eyes never for a moment left the barrel of the revolver—his revolver—that was pointing, at this moment, at his chest. He had to remember; his very life depended on it.

  ‘The foreman?’ he gasped at last. ‘Yes, yes, there was a man. Corbett. Welsh. Or came from a Welsh family. Worked at the West India Dock, he was the nightwatchman. There had been looting … We had instructions to step up security.’

  He paused, seemingly panic-stricken, staring at the gun, comically cross-eyed.

  She could shoot him now, but that wasn’t right. That was not how it must be. She must hear him say it: ‘I’m sorry’. He must atone.

  This then was her mission. This was His plan for her.

  ‘It was you, wasn’t it? It was you who had him sacked.’

  The revolver shook wildly in her hands. She gripped it so tightly the butt cut into the flesh of her palms.

  Mr Wallis appeared confused. He shook his head as though to clear it, as though to blank her out completely, to make her disappear.

  ‘But I—Are you—is this man in some way related to you? Not your father? Yes, of course. I see. My God.’ He appeared to stagger, reached behind him blindly for the desktop with which to steady himself. ‘But, Miss Corbett.’ He licked his lips, blinking rapidly. ‘Miss Corbett, you must understand. It was imperative the docks, the warehouse were kept secure … No one could be trusted in those days. You must realise—the convoys had to get through—there were so little food reserves it was an issue of national security—’

  ‘You destroyed him! You destroyed us!’

  Mr Wallis stared at her.

  ‘But I don’t—’

  ‘We was starvin’! We was all starvin’! Were you starvin’, Mr Wallis?’

  Mr Wallis opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  ‘Dad knew it was wrong! Lord knows, we was brought up to fear the Lord, but what’s an orange? A single orange to feed his children? And he was so ashamed. Do you think he’d have done it if he had thought there was any other way?’