‘Over six feet tall?’ The ex-officer picked this up as unusual. ‘Broad frame? Silent type?’ There was such a man who was a regular here, intent on drinking himself to death.
‘Richie don’t say much,’ Gertie agreed.
‘Do you look after him?’
‘On and off. What can I do? I can’t turn my back on him if he turns up on my doorstep, can I?’ She explained that she ran a pub off Shaftesbury Avenue, that Richie sometimes used Bernhardt Court as his pitch for begging coppers from theatregoers.
Wallace glanced at Meggie, wondering how she fitted in.
‘She wants to talk to Palmer, that’s all,’ Gertie said quickly. ‘Ain’t no harm in that, is there?’
‘Are you lending a hand as well?’ Suspicions lingered about Gertie’s motives, but Wallace evidently decided that neither she nor Meggie looked official enough to cause problems. ‘Look, if I’ve got the right man, he is a regular here. Bunk number 85. But we’re not open to visitors.’ He lowered his voice. ‘To tell you the honest truth, it isn’t a fit place for you to be when the bunks are occupied. I wouldn’t let my wife or daughter within a mile of the place, nor any decent woman. I’m sorry, but it’s best to be frank.’
Gertie too was clear about not wanting to spend an air raid cooped up with a load of down-and-outs. ‘I’d rather take my chances out there with Butler’s bombs,’ she confessed. ‘But you’re my starting point, Captain Wallace. Between us, we should be able to pin down Richie Palmer for Meggie here to talk to.’ She glanced at her watch. Opening time beckoned her back to the Court, but it was important to satisfy Meggie’s curiosity. Without Richie, her deal with Meggie was incomplete.
The ex-army man knitted his brows. ‘Wait. There’s a possibility . . . yes, let me go and make enquiries.’
While he vanished into a small office and leafed through a ledger on the desk, Meggie stood numb with misery. The prospect of meeting up with her father at last now held no joy, not in a place like the Hungerford Club. She’d imagined at least that he might still be able to fend for himself, not rely on someone else being there to scoop him up with the very dregs of society.
Captain Wallace returned. He fingered his moustache as if still in doubt. ‘I was right; we have Palmer down as being in need of medical aid. We keep a register of men receiving treatment from Dr Munroe in the clinic here. He’s on the current list.’
Gertie nodded briskly. ‘That’s a start.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Meggie spoke up for the first time.
‘There’s no record of that; only of medical requirements. Palmer needed a course of penicillin. That’s all I know. However, I could take you next door. Dr Munroe will have the details.’
He ushered them across the dormitory, under the curious gaze of the orderlies, through a door into the next archway, where the space was partitioned into smaller rooms with doors marked Pharmacy, Bathhouse, Sickbay in stencilled letters. Here in an office, an introduction was made to a portly man wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and a white coat. Wallace explained their errand, and before they knew it, the doctor had confirmed that Richie Palmer was indeed on his fist of patients. The man had a bad bronchial infection and had been kept in overnight. He was at this very minute in isolation in the small sickbay beyond the pharmacy.
Meggie’s pulse started to race. From being stalled by the captain only five minutes before, she was on the brink of coming face to face with the man she’d built so many childhood dreams around. It was strange then how earth-bound she felt. She noticed the doctor’s scrubbed hands, the white crescents at the tip of each fingernail, the shininess of his bald scalp.
Dr Munroe looked up sharply from behind his desk. What did they want with his patient?
Meggie heard Gertie launch into another explanation; it wasn’t her but Meggie who had an interest in Palmer. She offered to wait outside with the captain if the doctor would be kind enough to take Meggie through.
Yes, but what was the girl’s business with the sick man?
For the first time Gertie hesitated. ‘She can tell you that herself.’ She nudged Meggie out of her daze.
Meggie took a deep breath. Falteringly she gave her name, explained her family circumstances, the tangled thread that had led her to the Hungerford Club. ‘I’d like to see him, please. You see, I’m Richie Palmer’s daughter.’
Richie Palmer sat in a chair in the sickbay at the Hungerford Club. The pain in his chest, the rattle of phlegm in his throat had kept him awake all through the night, though for him the days, and nights merged, and life had lost all sense of shape and direction. He was washed up, finished. A lung infection on top of a bad liver, a weak heart. What did it matter? He would lay up for a couple of days here at the Club under a haze of sedatives, then drift again, drink again if he could beg the coppers, or summon the energy to look up one of his few remaining acquaintances.
He hadn’t always been so low. There had been times when he’d held down a job for a few months, until he’d shown up at work with a hangover once too often and been given his marching orders again. There had been women, even in these last few years, whenever he made the effort to smarten up. Somehow he remained attractive to them. They didn’t mind his surliness and his silences, since he had a masculinity that appealed in the shape of a strong, well-muscled frame before the drink did its worst. And he had features that they read things into; a full, sensual mouth, deep-set hooded eyes, a mumbling voice that slurred lazily and seemed to break down their defences. He was out of shape now, though. Muscles had gone slack, the skin on his face was lined and sagging, he rarely shaved.
A voice at his elbow slowly roused him from his daze. He looked up with a jerk. The doctor’s white coat and pink face came slowly into focus.
‘This is him; this is Richie Palmer.’
Meggie stood, hands clasped, a startled look on her face. She couldn’t be sure that the man slumped in his chair was the one she’d seen in the Underground; his condition had gone downhill so fast. He looked up at her, slack-mouthed, unshaven, gasping for breath. Yes, it was the same man. The doctor, worn down by overwork and inadequate resources, showed little compassion. He stood by, prepared to wait only a few minutes before concluding the visit.
Though she recognized Richie as the man she was seeking, feeling his vague gaze upon her, Meggie’s gorge rose. Her mother had loved her father. How could anyone have feelings other than revulsion for the broken figure opposite?
He coughed with a loose, rattling sound. His chest heaved. “What is she, a nurse?’ he asked, casting round the room to locate the doctor. ‘Send her away. I don’t want no nurse.’
‘And you won’t get one here. You’re lucky to get a bed for a second night,’ Munroe told him sharply. He indicated to Meggie that he would go off to fetch Richie’s drugs. ‘You’ll be all right. He’s quiet and comparatively lucid. Say what you’ve come to say; you have ten minutes.’
She nodded. For a few moments, as the doctor left the room, she saw Richie’s eyelids droop and his head loll forward. Perhaps she would get up and leave without trying to talk. Afterwards, she would be able to tell herself that it had all been a case of mistaken identity.
‘If you’re not a nurse, what are you?’ His eyes were still half closed. A welfare officer? A do-gooder? As he opened his eyes, his forehead creased into a frown. ‘Where am I?’ He struggled out of the chair, but his legs refused to support him. He fell back.
‘You’re in the Hungerford Club. This is the sickbay.’ She didn’t offer to help him.
Shaking his head, gazing round the room, at last he dragged his attention back to her face. ‘Sadie?’
One word. It was like a cell door thudding shut, a key turning in a lock. This then was her father.
‘No, not Sadie. I’m your daughter, Meggie.’
Again he tried to raise himself. The small yellow room was filled with his swearing and his gasping breath. ‘Sadie. It’s Sadie, ain’t it?’
‘It’s Meggie.’ A dreadful
calm came over her.
‘I want to get out of here.’
‘Shall I fetch the doctor?’
He swore again. ‘Why are you here?’
He couldn’t clear his head of the mad notion that he’d lost nearly twenty years and was staring into the face of the woman he’d snatched from the smug safety of her family on Duke Street, tied her to him in the face of Rob Parsons’ bitter opposition, got her pregnant, then ditched her. In the corner of the room there would lurk the angry brother waiting to get his revenge.
‘I ain’t Sadie.’ She had to repeat it over and over to calm him. ‘Sadie’s my mother. You saw me when I was a little baby. Don’t you remember?’ Meggie picked up his fear that there was someone else in the room. Despite her revulsion, she began to pity him. ‘Don’t worry, they don’t know I came here.’
After a while the pieces fell into place; this was many years later, time for the dark-haired, brown-eyed baby to have grown into the severe but beautiful girl sitting opposite. He got things in order. She couldn’t know it, but Meggie wasn’t the only child he’d fathered, then abandoned, over the years.
‘Is Sadie waiting outside?’ The edges of the room were blurred; he was convinced that there was another presence.
‘No. She don’t know!’
‘How did you find me, then?’
‘Through Gertie Elliot.’ This was the filthy bargain; Richie Palmer for Ronnie, out of a sentimental idea that her father would clap eyes on her and instantly love her.
Gertie’s name also meant something to the sick man, though he failed to make the connection between his present visitor and the landlady at the Bell. His eyelids drooped, he put a shaking hand to his temple. ‘Seen enough, have you?’
‘Are you very sick?’ Meggie could see that he was in pain. The regulation pyjamas donated to the club gave him the look of a prisoner, known by number not by name. They’d cut his grey hair short, almost to a stubble.
‘With a bit of luck, I am.’
She grimaced. ‘Shall I go?’ She gave up hope that he would show any interest in her; he’d hardly seemed to register her presence after the initial shock.
‘No. Tell me about Sadie.’
The hand shielding his face was mottled and threaded with thick veins. ‘She’s well, considering. We sent the boys up north because of the Blitz. She’s up there with them now.’
‘Boys?’
‘My two brothers.’
‘Who did she get hitched to?’
‘Walter Davidson.’ The best stepfather anyone could wish for, she reflected guiltily.
Richie coughed and turned the phlegm inside his mouth.
‘You worked for him and my Uncle Rob.’
‘What if I did? Are they thinking of giving me my old job back?’ His laugh ended in another coughing fit. ‘That’s funny, if you did but know it.’
Meggie sighed. ‘Ain’t you ever wondered about . . . me?’ She’d harboured the notion that she at least existed inside her father’s head; in his thoughts and dreams, if not in his actions.
He glanced up at her from under hooded lids. ‘Sometimes.’
‘Won’t you ask me something about myself?’
‘I can see plain enough. You got your ma’s stubborn streak.’
She raised her head higher. He hadn’t forgotten everything, then.
‘Don’t worry, you ain’t got nothing of me in you.’ He recognized his own worthlessness, had done for years. ‘You’re a Parsons through and through.’ The dark brown, wavy hair, the big eyes and proud look, the slight figure. ‘Will you tell her you tracked me down?’
She shook her head. This was a secret she would cling to; there was only hopelessness in it. The man was too far gone. Yet he said he had sometimes wondered about her.
‘No.’ He rested his head against the back of the chair.
‘Shall I come again?’
It was his turn to deny her. ‘I ain’t got nothing to give you. You can see that.’
‘I don’t want anything!’
He looked her in the eye in a moment of clear, concentrated communication. ‘Yes, you do,’ he insisted. ‘And I ain’t got it to give.’
Meggie wished the visit would finish. She was glad when the doctor came back to tell her that her time with Richie Palmer was up. She would find her friend waiting outside, he said. She made a fumbled farewell, lacking the right phrase, doubtful of her future intentions as far as her father was concerned.
‘You’re your ma’s girl,’ Richie reminded her as she got up to leave.
There was one last thing; a hunger to have another question answered. She steeled herself. ‘Did you see me once down Tottenham Court tube?’
Richie was falling back into confusion, or perhaps he wanted Munroe to think he was sicker than he really was. He coughed and turned away.
‘Don’t expect him to remember,’ the doctor advised, ushering her out.
Meggie drew herself together by buttoning her white coat. She was already through the door, out in the corridor.
‘I did.’ Richie’s reply was late, issued through the wheeze and crackle of his diseased lungs. She could hear him drumming his fingers on the arms of the chair.
Full circle.
To Meggie’s surprise, the doctor offered to shake her hand. ‘Don’t take it too hard,’ he advised.
‘I don’t.’ She put on a brave smile and went into the street. She thought of the letter to Ronnie in the postbox on Charing Cross Road. Could she get there and retrieve it when the postman made his collection? No, Gertie would have planned for that too. The letter would be on its way to Plymouth.
There was no sign of Ronnie’s mother in the throng of traffic that roared beneath the railway arches; the woman who must have knowingly betrayed her in this worst of all bargains. No stylish figure in fur hat and collar. Nothing.
What do I do now? Meggie asked herself. She felt tiny, lost. Where to now? Nowhere. Who with? No one.
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘The Yanks are in Somerset!’ Dorothy O’Hagan crowed over the newspaper spread on the bar at the Duke. ‘It’s true; it says here they’ve set up bases all over the country. They’re on the verge of coming in with us.’ She still loved to goad Tommy, who would go green when he heard the latest. ‘That’s where Edie went, ain’t it? Somewhere near Taunton?’
‘About time too.’ Dolly headed for safer waters. It was early on a Saturday evening in autumn, the pub was crowded, but Dorothy’s remark had hit home. She saw Tommy standing further along the bar, his face like thunder. What’s the betting they come in all guns blazing, reckoning they can beat old Hitler single-handed?’
‘Yes, but the Yanks!’ Dorothy made cow-eyes over it. ‘Don’t I wish I was in Somerset right now!’
‘They ain’t all Clark Gable, you know. I bet there’s ugly Yanks and all.’ Dolly fed Dorothy all the right lines without realizing it. ‘Anyhow, looks ain’t the important thing.’
‘Ain’t it?’ With a voice loaded with innuendo, Dorothy continued to enthuse. ‘It’s them two-tone uniforms, and such nice, smooth cloth. And them fuzzy haircuts. They give you goose-bumps, just thinking about them.’
‘Not me,’ Dolly said.
‘Me neither.’ Annie slipped Tommy a sympathetic extra whisky. ‘Take no notice.’
It was over a week since Edie had written. Every morning at Rob’s house, Tommy was up first waiting for the post. ‘I don’t.’ He sieved the drink through his teeth. ‘In any case, Dorothy would go after anything in trousers.’
His ex-wife heard, protested loudly and looked round for support.
‘Serves you right,’ Dolly said, unconcerned. ‘Maybe you’ll pipe down in future.’
‘All right?’ Rob slid past Tommy, carrying drinks for Amy and himself. Tommy looked down in the dumps, cutting himself off from the general conversation. ‘Don’t take it to heart.’
‘Would I?’ Tommy said glumly.
‘Not if you’ve got any sense, you wouldn’t.’ They all
knew how Dorothy tried to needle him whenever she could. Usually Tommy rose well above it. Rob paused to put his drinks down on the bar. ‘Look, if it’s getting under your skin, I wouldn’t hang around if I were you.’
Tommy drew deep on his cigarette. It wasn’t Yanks that bothered Mm, but he couldn’t explain to Rob. ‘Righto.’
Rob’s way of looking at it included no half-measures, as usual. He’d heard the women in the family going on about Edie needing time to get over Morell, but that was all cock and bull. Did she have to go halfway across the country to sort herself out?
‘I would not,’ he repeated. ‘You wouldn’t catch me waiting for a Yank or a POW to jump into my shoes.’
Tommy hunched his shoulders, glared at his glass.
Rob ploughed on. ‘That’s bleeding stupid, that is. I reckon she’s got you just where she wants you, right under her little finger. Well, it wouldn’t be any good for me. I’d be on that Bristol sleeper like a bleeding shot.’
‘Easy for you to say.’
‘Want to bet? I would. I’d be there keeping my beady eye on her. You ask my old lady.’ Hard as it was to believe, the matronly Amy had been a terrible flirt when they first got together.
‘Edie ain’t my old lady,’ Tommy reminded him. He was sick of advice. What bothered him, pure and simple, was why Edie hadn’t written. ‘Anyhow, who’d work the news stand?’ He couldn’t just cut and run, even if he wanted to.
‘Bobby would. And Jimmie. It’d give them something to do.’ Again Rob stated what he thought was the obvious; sometimes people couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
Tommy pursed his lips. He studied the wood grain on the bar. Overnight sleeper to Bristol? Then how would he get out into the sticks? By bus? He began to wonder if it was feasible.
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