Black Out (Frederick Troy 1)

by Lawton, John

  ‘Makes a change I suppose. Most of the time one can get heartily sick of sentences beginning “before the war”.’

  She grinned and held up her hand as though taking an oath.

  ‘That phrase shall ne’er pass my lips again!’

  Then she laughed. And Troy watched as though from another planet. He had not seen her laugh before. It was a moment as awesome as Garbo’s first laugh in Ninotchka. His feelings glided over one another like oil on water. Her smiles and grins and laughs captivated him utterly, and at the same time the urgency of her speech, the revelation with which she spoke, all put him in mind of the three days he had spent, as Onions put it, beating her senseless at the Yard.

  She smiled her perfect smile and flicked back the lock of hair over her eye, holding it there a moment with her hand poised.

  ‘I wanted to ask you about after the war,’ she said, and let her hair tumble once more. ‘It’s something I’ve never thought about.’

  ‘Nor me,’ Troy said.

  ‘What shall we do?’

  The question stunned him. Surely he could not have heard her right?

  ‘After the war. What shall we do?’ she said again, and he searched in her tone for every possible shred of meaning.

  A ripple of applause announced the return of the band. Romero was a stout Latin, well past middle age, with a burnt-cork moustache and thick, Brylcreemed hair pasted tightly across his scalp away from the forehead. He bowed slightly, turned to his band and struck up Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’. The floor began to fill with dancing couples, shuffling along in the slow, public embrace that passed for dancing.

  ‘I love this song. Can we dance?’

  ‘What? I mean . . . I don’t even know what kind of dance it is!’

  ‘Slow foxtrot, clot!’

  She stood up and stretched out an arm towards him. The pure smile, the black black hair, and the green green green of her eyes drew him from his seat. He took the arm and let himself be pulled on to the dance floor.

  ‘I’m not very good at this,’ he murmured.

  In her heels she was hardly less than six feet – he found himself level with her chin and constantly looking up. He blundered on, beneath the stars and under the sun, counting himself lucky not to be treading on her feet. Then it dawned on him. Dancing backwards she may be, but she was leading him certainly and securely. She was in his arms and he was surely in her hands.

  As the last note trailed off the crowd applauded. She took his head in both hands and kissed him on the mouth. A kiss so passionate he felt bruised. She drew back. Rubbed his cheek where the cut from the razor showed as a small red scar.

  ‘What shall we do?’ she said again, and before Troy could say anything blurted out that she must, simply must, just have a word with Romero and dashed off in the direction of the bandstand.

  Troy resumed his seat. Sipped at the last of the champagne.

  ‘What shall we do?’ He thought – she cannot possibly mean what those words seem to mean. But her tone and the look in those bottle-green eyes told him she did.

  Across the dance floor he could see her returning. The grace in every movement was unearthly, a woman without a single gawky gesture. He got up once more. The band went into ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. He extended a hand to her, hoping he could lure her to the seat before she lured him back to the dance, but she stopped a few feet away from him and appeared to be looking past him. He turned to look towards the entrance. Wayne stood on the bottom step holding her cloak. He looked right through Troy to Brack as though he had not even noticed he was there. He spread the cloak like bat’s wings, opening out the space into which he invited her to step. Troy looked back. Diana had frozen. The evening’s smile had vanished. Then her feet moved, gliding not walking, and as she came level with him he took her hand, holding it gently without force. She glided on past him. Her head turned to look down into his eyes. She floated on until both their arms were outstretched and one of them would have to break the grip. He felt her hand slide across his, her fingernails tantalisingly stroking his palm until only their fingers touched. She stopped, looked at him one last time, her fingertips left his and she fled.

  He pushed his way through the crowd of dancing couples and out into the street. People were everywhere. The Ritz was disgorging a host of American soldiers, most the worse for drink. They flowed out across the road, over the pavement up towards Berkeley Square and down towards Piccadilly Circus, singing and chanting. He saw Wayne hail a cab from the Ritz side. He crossed over as a swirl of soldiers came back down Berkeley Street and took him up like a man helpless, drowning in the ebb tide. The last he saw of her was one fleeting, backward glance as Wayne dived into the cab and pulled her in behind him, then the tide surged and deposited him against one of the pillars of the Ritz and he sank down to the pavement and a thousand feet passed over him.

  The roar dwindled. The street cleared like mist in a breeze. He sat on the pavement. He did not move. He felt he could not move. His legs were numb and all he felt was the illusive tingle on his hand from the passing stroke of her nails. Feet approached him, pick-pock across the tarmacadam.

  ‘Get up!’

  He looked at a pair of high-heeled shoes and followed a pair of silk stockings thighward. There she stood, pigeon-chested again, puffed out with her own anger.

  ‘Get up!’ Tosca said, and when Troy failed to move held out a hand. He took it, she pulled him to his feet, let go her hand, bunched it into a fist and hit him hard across the cheek. He tasted blood.

  ‘You bastard!’

  She walked off along Piccadilly. A young soldier approached and said, ‘Hi, Toots.’ And she hit him far harder than she had hit Troy. He sat down in the road with a bump, pole-axed. Troy walked past him, muttered, ‘Terribly sorry’, and hastened to catch up with Tosca. All the way to Orange Street she spoke not a word, yet it seemed understood that he should follow. He dared not overtake her.

  71

  She poured a large bourbon for herself. She did not offer him one. He stood facing her across the table as she went through the familiar routine of kicking off her shoes and discarding her battledress –only now the accompanying silence rendered every action anew and stripped away the veneer of knowledge.

  ‘Y’ know,’ she said, at last, looking down into her glass, ‘I came looking for you to tell you Jimmy was back. I figured you’d want to know. I went to your house, but the hooker who hangs around the alley said I shouldn’t bother. She’d seen you get into a cab with what she called “a nice bit of posh” and you’d told the cabbie to take you to the Berkeley. So I walked to the Berkeley and do you know until I saw her with Jimmy I hadn’t even bothered to ask myself who this nice bit of posh might be. I mean . . . ’ her voiced soared, ‘I mean . . . ’ and louder still, ‘how dumb can a girl get? You bastard, Troy. You total fucking bastard!’

  She sat down at the table, poured herself another drink, knocked it back in one and poured a third.

  ‘I don’t have an explanation,’ he said.

  ‘Thank God for that. I’d hate to sit and listen to your lies.’

  ‘I have to go,’ he said sheepishly.

  ‘How long have you been fucking Diana Brack? That was Diana Brack, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed.

  ‘And you have been fucking her, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how long has this been going on?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You asshole,’ she said, but the ferocity was draining from her voice. A throaty sadness crept in in its place. ‘You asshole, you total fucking asshole.’

  ‘I have to go,’ he said once more, and turned for the door.

  Tosca shot across the room and slammed the door shut with the whole force of her body and squared off to him, shoeless and five foot nothing, shoulders back against the door, eyes level with his chin, staring him and daring him.

  ‘Troy, you leave now and you can never come back. You hear me –
never!’

  ‘I can’t stay. Wayne is at the Savoy.’

  ‘Yes you can – he ain’t going nowhere.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Six a.m. appointment with Zelly. Sunday morning. And he’s tied up all day Monday.’

  ‘All day?’

  ‘D-Day.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Monday is D-Day. And don’t ask me to say it again. I’m not committing treason three times even for you. Jimmy won’t run. Jimmy can’t run. He’ll keep the Sunday meet with Zelly. It’s probably the most important of his life. It’s what he does with his Saturdays that’s got me worried.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Take a seat, Troy. We got things to talk about.’

  She fought the same old battle with the fridge door and pulled out a pizza pie the size of a cartwheel.

  ‘It’s all there is. PX is running kinda low. I guess you ain’t tasted it hot yet?’

  Troy shook his head. She put a match to the oven and slid the pizza in on its tinfoil tray.

  ‘Don’t let me forget.’

  She took a second glass from the draining-board, looked disapprovingly at its greasy smears and shoved it and the bottle across the table at him.

  ‘I’ll be glad to get out of this place. It’s beginning to feel like a hole.’

  Troy looked around.

  ‘You could try cleaning up,’ he ventured.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Troy. I forgive nothing. This is purely business.’

  ‘Business? Yours or mine?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just know Jimmy is up to something. Something pretty big.’

  ‘D-Day could be rather large I should think.’

  ‘Something . . . something that’s him. Something very Jimmy. He was on a high today. It was running in his blood. He’s on some kind of a mission. He was acting like he always acts when he has something special coming down. He has a kind of rooster swagger to him, and he and Zelly go off into huddles and Zelly gets that dumb-ass worried look as though he thinks Jimmy’s gonna drop the both of them right in it. And it’s Saturday whatever it is. “I’ll take care of it Saturday,” he told Zelly. And Zelly says “Sure sure” and just keeps right on sweating.’

  She stared into the bottom of her glass again, not looking at him, her voice trailing away almost to nothing. ‘Oh God, Troy – I’m scared.’

  Troy slipped off his coat and shoes, padded softly round the table, and dropped to his knees. He lifted her chin with one hand. Against expectation her eyes were dry – the look was one of intense concern and, for the time being at least, her emotions seemed to be under control. He had no idea of what she was capable.

  ‘He’s gonna kill somebody. I just know it.’

  ‘Do you know who?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Troy, if I knew I’d’ve told you five minutes ago! Of course I don’t know!’

  ‘Do you know where?’

  ‘Nope – all I know is tomorrow night.’

  Troy thought for a moment. He felt the need to reassure her, but had no idea what word or gesture might prove acceptable.

  ‘I’ll handle it. Don’t worry,’ he said, and placed a hand on her stockinged knee.

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake – you’ve spent the last two months telling me the guy’s a killer. You told me he likes it. This is a guy who kills for pleasure!’

  ‘He does,’ he said very matter-of-factly.

  ‘Then what the fuck are you going to do???’

  ‘Arrest him. That’s my job.’

  She sighed in exasperation and he kissed her lightly on her left ear and slid his hand up her skirt and along her thigh.

  ‘Will you stop that!’

  She shook her head vigorously, as though he were a small species of insect tangled in her hair.

  ‘Does doing your goddamn job mean going up against a maniac?’

  ‘Won’t be the first time.’

  He cautiously approached her knickers, thinking all the time that this was no time for caution.

  ‘What in hell are you tryin’ ter do?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  And he took her ear-lobe between his teeth. She squirmed and stomped the floor with her stockinged feet.

  ‘Goddamit, Troy! When you first walked in here you didn’t know knicker elastic from liquorice! Now you think you can mend any damn thing if only you can get me into bed. Dammit, I don’t know you at all, do I?’

  Troy said nothing and began a perilous course of trying to tug her knickers kneeward.

  ‘I mean. I never even knew you played the piano.’

  ‘You never asked.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do, go through the instruments of the orchestra – hey honey, how are you on woodwind? – you set for a bash on the snare drum? For fuck’s sake, Troy, will you stop that!’

  He ignored her. The room began to fill with the smell of melting cheese. A smell so pre-war, so old of old England it was almost seductive in itself, and this turned gently, mingled with the scent of basil and its hint of the exotic, that continental touch, all garlic and black stockings, the forbidden.

  ‘Pizza’s almost done,’ she said.

  Troy said nothing. She lifted her buttocks from the chair and the elastic recoiled on to his hand like a rebounding yo-yo and the silk knickers bunched into his grip as he pulled them towards him.

  ‘You want it before or after?’ she said.

  72

  She read her ten pages of Huck Finn as he scrambled eggs and made toast. It was her third time through the book in the time she had known him, she pointed out. They faced each other across morning coffee, sitting on the floor, less than half-dressed.

  ‘Where have you got to?’

  ‘Duke of Bridgewater just got himself tarred and feathered again. There’s a lot to be said for knowing when you’re in danger.’

  She took up the cup in both hands and drank deeply.

  ‘Ah mm ya ya nmmm!’

  ‘Are you working today?’ he asked.

  ‘With Armageddon two days away would I not be working? Of course I’m working! Leave got cancelled for almost everybody. Those assholes cluttering up Piccadilly last night were probably under orders to go out and get drunk and make it look like London is still full of Yankees. Haven’t you noticed how empty London’s been the last week? Everybody’s down on the South Coast. I bet you can’t get a cream tea in Dorset for love or dollars.’

  ‘So it is Normandy?’

  ‘Did you ever doubt it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Utah, Omaha, Juno, Gold, Sword.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The beaches. That’s what we call ’em. I chose Juno. I figured the war needed a woman’s touch. Ike said he wasn’t having his boys land on a beach called Fanny, which was to be my first choice, so I went for a goddess instead. My piece of history, not bad, eh?’

  She held out her cup for more coffee. He filled it.

  ‘I need you to promise me something,’ she said.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘You won’t go up against Jimmy alone – like you were going to do last night? You go round to the Savoy with a whole bunch of coppers and you pull him in. Promise?’

  Troy thought for a moment. He had half-expected her to ask this. ‘I can’t do that.’

  She slapped the cup down, splashing hot coffee across his naked leg.

  ‘Jesus, Troy!’

  ‘I can’t do that because I have no grounds on which to arrest him.’

  ‘Baloney – you spent the last two months trying to arrest the bastard!’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent the last two months trying to get enough evidence to arrest him. Trying to break his alibi. He’s still alibied. That statement of Ike’s still stands. Why do you think I’ve received no co-operation from anyone? Because if I succeed I’m calling the Supreme Allied Commander a liar.’

  ‘We all make mistakes. Really, when you get to know him Ike’s OK. I mean not grouchy or anything and not too
bright. I mean OK for a general – you wouldn’t want him to be President or anything like that. I guess someone told him it was all in the national interest, as you guys say – and I guess that someone was Jimmy.’

  ‘Whatever Jimmy has in mind tonight, I need to catch him in flagrante delicto.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I need to catch him at it. I need the evidence.’

  She was aghast. Her mouth opened and no words came out. She drew breath sharply and made indeterminate noises that led to ‘Troy, Troy, Troy, do not go up against Jimmy!’

  ‘I’ve no choice.’

  ‘Please – Troy, you don’t know – you can’t imagine – just pull him – a moving violation, anything – just get him off the streets by nightfall. Don’t try and take him on.’

  Troy looked back at her in silence.

  ‘Then at least get yourself a gun. I know it’s not what you bobbies do, but get yourself a gun. You can do that, can’t you? I mean that’s not asking the earth, is it?’

  They dressed. With every other word she called him stupid. Troy gave up trying to explain, and then she looked at her watch and swore.

  ‘Baby, I gotta run. No time. Come see me tonight. Come show me you’re still in one piece.’

  She stood at her dressing-table, fully dressed, all neat in olive green, fiddling at one ear. She looked down into her jewellery box, slammed something down and said, ‘Why does this always happen?’

  She turned to Troy. Kissed him on the lips, pulled back, smiled, kissed him again and said, ‘Bring ’em back alive!’ and dashed out.

  Troy looked around for the phone, and after a few minutes’ search, found it under the bed with a small mountain of discarded stockings and American magazines and blew the dust off it. He called Wildeve. Wildeve exploded softly in a mixture of anxiety and anger.

  ‘Freddie, where the hell are you?’

  ‘I’m at home. Now listen . . .’

  ‘How long have you been there?’

  ‘What does it matter?’

  ‘I waited outside your house all fucking night!’

  Only Ruby, it seemed, had prevented Jack from meeting Tosca.