‘I wish I was dead,’ she began again. ‘Dead and underground. Tucked away somewhere quiet where the pain couldn’t get at me. Laid out proper and put to rest. Helping up next year’s roses.’
Then she sat bolt upright.
‘Well, why shouldn’t I?’ she asked herself. ‘Who’s to stop me? It’s my sacred spark, isn’t it? Not anybody else’s…’
She’d done it. Just like that, with no warning. Five minutes before, the idea hadn’t even occurred to her. And now she’d booked her passage. Booked the one passage on which there is single fare only and no return. She’d taken ten aspirins and three sleeping‐tablets. And when her eye caught the bit about being dangerous to exceed the stated dose she couldn’t help laughing.
She was half unconscious already. Just lying there, doll‐size, scarcely breathing. One thin yellow arm hung down out of the bed trailing, and the other was folded across her chest with the knuckles up against her eyes as if she had been crying. As suicides went, it had been nothing. Simply swallowing the tablets was easy. She’d gulped them down with some water out of the tooth‐glass. And she’d have taken another forty if necessary.
For as long as she could think clearly with all that drug inside her, she argued it all out and the answer still came the same. She was within her rights. There had been no other way for it. It wasn’t Connie who was walking out on her part. It was the whole cast that had walked out on her. And she wasn’t standing for it.
Then, just as her eyes were misting over and closing, a bright light came to her. She saw how selfish and sinful she had been. And she wanted to be alive again. Wanted it desperately. She tried to sit up in bed for a moment. Sit up? She couldn’t even draw her arm in. It was too late now for any misgivings. She was numb all over. Already it was somebody else’s feet that were at the bottom of her legs. She’d said good‐bye for the last time. That was why – longing for something that she couldn’t have because she’d given it away herself – she was crying when she finally passed out.
The bright light that had come to her wasn’t an inner one. It was simply the afternoon sunlight catching the brass edge of the bird‐cage. But it had been enough. She’d realised in that moment that she wasn’t quite alone. There was someone dependent on her. And that was every bit as good as having someone to turn to.
Because of Duke she’d wanted to go on living.
2
Anyhow, it was all over now. She was in heaven. And the realisation astonished her that, even after the Awful Thing she’d done, it was heaven and not the other place. Either the regulations were more merciful than anybody led her to suppose, or somebody had blundered. Whichever way it was, she wasn’t going to say anything unless they raised the matter with her.
She didn’t know how long she’d been there, because time didn’t seem to matter much anyway. All that she knew was that the pain had stopped and she felt better. Felt better and liked the new neighbour‐hood. It was a bit strange of course – little cherubs sitting about on vi‐spring clouds and choirs of angels conducted by seraphim like Jack Buchanan making music in the corners – but not so strange that you couldn’t get used to it. Everyone was so friendly, too. ‘How are you, Connie? Better?’ or ‘Settled in all right? If there’s anything you want, remember you’ve only got to ask’ – she was having that sort of remark made to her all the time. What was more, she seemed to know them all without introduction. ‘I’m fine, thank you, Luke,’ she had said before she realised that she’d never really met the Saint before.
The funny thing was her age. As soon as she’d got there she’d naturally gone to tidy herself up in the Ladies’ by the front entrance and, when she looked in the big silver mirror that was hanging up there, she scarcely knew herself. She wasn’t exactly young again. Not seventeen or anything like that. But she certainly didn’t look her age. She was so much fatter. And her hair didn’t seem to have been dyed. With war‐time lighting she might have passed for thirty‐five anywhere.
She wasn’t even surprised, though she couldn’t help going a bit trembly, when she heard that St Peter was coming to see her that afternoon. Not Connie going to see St Peter, but St Peter coming to see Connie. A sort of royal visit as it were. But it didn’t turn out a bit that way. There wasn’t any guard of honour, or curtseyings, or trumpets or that sort of thing. In fact, she didn’t properly realise that he had come until she found him sitting there beside her, leaning up against the same star. And he wasn’t in the least what she’d imagined. There was no long robe or white beard. No saints’ crown. No sword. No key. He was simply a middle‐aged man in a dark suit and a bow‐tie, with a rolled umbrella hanging over his forearm. Altogether, he was just like the nice kind gentleman at the railway station who had given her the pound note to buy Mars Bars for the evacuees. He was so much like him in fact that she became quite alarmed for a moment. She wondered if they really could be one and the same person.
It didn’t put her at her ease either when St Peter hung up his black Homburg on one of the points of the star, and began opening the black brief‐case that he’d got with him.
‘Just one or two points I’d like to run over with you,’ he said. ‘I always like to meet the new arrivals personally.’
Connie couldn’t help noticing that the file he’d taken out of the briefcase had her name on it in full, with ‘Connie’ in brackets afterwards. He even had all her old addresses, one after another, right back to childhood days. Below the last one, 10 Dulcimer Street, S.E. 1, a double line had been drawn in red ink with the words FINAL DEPARTURE and the date, September 8th, 1940, added with a rubber‐stamp afterwards. It was her dossier all right.
‘Would you like to say anything first or shall I begin right away?’ St Peter asked her.
And, as he spoke, he opened up the folder with all the pages neatly fastened in loose‐leaf fashion and some of the sheets flagged with red adhesive tape. She’d have liked to know what those sheets said, but the way St Peter was holding the folder that was impossible. It would have looked bad if he’d caught her trying to cheat. Besides what was the use of it? It wasn’t like being up before a beak. You couldn’t fool St Peter – or, at least, she supposed you couldn’t. There was only one thing for it and that was to make a clean breast of everything.
‘There is just one little thing I’d like to say,’ she told him quietly. ‘I do appreciate being here. It’s been very kind of you to take the trouble.’
‘No trouble at all, Connie, I assure you,’ he told her. ‘We’d been expecting you.’
Looking back on it she wondered why she hadn’t let it go at that. But there was something about him that was so frank and friendly that she suddenly found herself wanting to tell him things – all sorts of things. If only she could get those off her chest, she’d feel better. But when she actually came to it she realised that she didn’t know him well enough. So all she did was to mutter something general by way of apology.
‘I’ve led a rotten sort of life,’ was what she said.
‘Oh, really?’ St Peter asked in a surprised sort of voice. ‘It doesn’t say anything about it here.’
Not say anything! She whistled. It looked as though someone had been keeping the facts from him.
‘I… haven’t always been good,’ she said lamely.
‘In what way?’ St Peter asked, flipping through the dossier with his finger.
That was rather embarrassing. She would much rather that he had blamed her for it and been done with it. This business of making her tell him was slower than she liked it. She’d rather have had one walloping, break‐neck speed confession that would have left her gasping.
‘Oh, almost every way,’ she said with a little gesture of hopelessness. ‘I’ve knocked around quite a bit one way and another. I was only a kid the first time I fell.’
‘How much of a kid?’ he asked.
‘Under sixteen,’ she answered, dropping her eyes.
St Peter paused.
‘Under sixteen,’ he repeated. ‘That
’s a long while ago, isn’t it?’ Connie nodded.
‘Of course,’ St Peter went on, ‘if you’d come to us then we’d have to have spoken to you about it. We couldn’t have overlooked it. But you’re practically a different person now. There’s no point in going right back like that.’
Connie looked up.
‘You mean it?’ she asked.
‘Certainly,’ St Peter told her. ‘It would only make you unhappy.’ ‘And does that go for all the rest of them?’ Connie inquired politely. ‘All my gay days, I mean.’
St Peter didn’t answer immediately. He was reading. Then he turned to her.
‘Not altogether,’ he said.
There was a pause.
‘You let one man down pretty badly,’ he went on. ‘Remember?’ Connie shook her head.
‘What… what was his name?’ she asked faintly.
‘Harry.’
Then it all came back to her. Came back so clearly that she wanted to cry. She could remember everything about him, even the way his check‐suit hadn’t fitted properly. And – wasn’t it funny? – right up to this moment she’d always congratulated herself on not having lost her head and gone through with it.
‘You lost marks over that,’ St Peter told her.
Connie kept her head averted.
‘How many?’ she asked at last.
‘Ten,’ St Peter answered. ‘All in one go.’
‘Out of a hundred?’
‘Out of a hundred.’
‘Phew!’ Connie wiped her forehead with a little wisp of fleecy cloud that was floating past her. ‘Was it as bad as all that?’
‘Naturally,’ St Peter told her. He was more serious now. Still friendly, but definitely serious. ‘If you’d married him you’d have had children. We’d got them all ready, and they weren’t wanted.’
‘My children?’ Connie asked him.
St Peter nodded.
‘What were they?’
‘Two boys and a girl.’
There was a pause.
‘Was the girl like me?’
‘Spitten image,’ St Peter answered. ‘Bit darker perhaps. But no mistaking.’
She gave a little sniff.
‘What became of them?’ she asked.
‘Had to go elsewhere,’ St Peter explained. ‘We held ’em back as long as we could, but God wasn’t able to reserve them any longer.’
‘The girl, too?’
St Peter inclined his head.
‘The girl, too,’ he told her.
She had a good cry then. A real good cry, thinking about what she’d missed. She put her head on St Peter’s shoulder and cried her heart out. When she’d finished St Peter lent her his own handkerchief because the fleecy cloud had moved on too far from her to catch it.
‘You see now what I mean?’ he said.
Connie dropped her eyes again.
‘I see,’ she said huskily. And she did.
‘Well,’ said St Peter, ‘I didn’t want to upset you. So we won’t say anything more about it. There’s just one little formality and then we’re through. Have you got a pen on you?’
Connie shook her head.
‘Well, use mine,’ St Peter told her. ‘It works all right if you shake it.’ It was a beautiful pen, all rolled‐gold and chasings; the feel of it made her better again immediately.
‘Now, I just want you to read this,’ St Peter went on, ‘and initial it if it’s all right. It’s not too late to alter it if any of the particulars aren’t quite right.’
With that, he detached the last page of the dossier and handed it to her. Connie ran her eyes down it.
There was a long pause. The tears were streaming down her cheeks again and she could hardly see.
‘That’s me all right,’ she said at last.
‘Then just initial it,’ St Peter said. ‘In the little square at the end.’ Connie scribbled in ‘C. T.’ and reached for St Peter’s handkerchief again. But she wasn’t quite through yet.
‘And the date,’ St Peter told her.
Then he got up and put his hand on her shoulder.
‘Now you’re really one of us,’ he said. ‘If you want anything you’ve got my number – Rainbow 1212. And of course if it’s an emergency, just dial “O”.’
He held out his hand to her as he said it, and Connie took it limply. So limply that St Peter immediately spotted that there was something wrong.
‘Cheer up,’ Connie, he said. ‘Don’t take it too much to heart, old girl. We get all sorts up here. Free will’s a very tricky business.’
It was 4 p.m. on the afternoon of the seventh of September when Connie passed out. And it was not until nearly 8 p.m. on the following evening when she came round again. The effect of the aspirins had entirely cleared off by then. And, except that she was a bit light‐headed for want of food, she felt marvellous. Not a pain in her. Not even a headache. Just a few head noises. Altogether she was in better condition than she had been for years. Better and brighter and more bounce in her. Quite the old high‐stepper, in fact. She got up and went over to the window.
The dusk outside startled her.
‘You’re late, Connie dear,’ she told herself. ‘Time you were getting dressed…’
3
It’s Scotland Yard again. But not the room we were in before. Not Percy’s room. This is two floors higher up. And there is no football group on the wall. Simply rows and rows of filing‐cabinets all round the place. All lettered. And all locked.
In the centre of the room there is a large deal table. And round the table three men are sitting. They are leaning forward. And propped up against the ink‐well under the low electric light is a row of photographs. All of plain, rather plump young men, all in their early twenties and all wearing glasses. Alongside them is another photograph, the master copy. One by one they keep glancing at it for comparison.
‘Isn’t doing too badly,’ one of the group says after a pause. ‘Not for a foreigner. He’s a progress‐chaser now. Must have brains.’
The man on the right glances up. Even though it’s Scotland Yard, he isn’t a policeman. He’s a lieutenant‐colonel.
‘Where d’you say he is?’ he asks.
‘Drayton and Sons, Leeds,’ the inspector tells him.
‘Optical manufacturers?’
The inspector nods.
‘Bomb‐sights?’
The inspector nods again.
There is a pause.
‘When’s it to be?’
It is the lieutenant‐colonel who has spoken.
‘When’s what to be?’ the inspector asks.
‘Bringing him in.’
The lieutenant‐colonel has only recently been put on special duties. But he’s enjoying them. And just to show how much at home he is in Scotland Yard, he likes using the language of the place.
But the inspector looks shocked.
‘Oh, not yet, sir,’ he says. ‘We don’t want to rush things. Find out first who he’s working to. Give him a run. There’s no hurry. Not now he’s being taken care of.’
The lieutenant‐colonel is a little bit hurt.
‘You’re quite sure he is this Otto Hapfel?’ he asks pointing at one of the photographs. ‘No doubt about it?’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ the inspector assures. ‘Just look at the nostrils. And those lobes. You’ll notice, too, that…’
The inspector begins to get technical.
Chapter XCII
Down at the cottage, it was a bit of a crush admittedly. Cynthia and Baby had Doris’ room. And Doris herself had to sleep on the couch in the living‐room. In fact, by the time Conservatory Cottage was tucked in for the night it was the sort of household that a billeting officer writes off as useless.
Mr and Mrs Josser still had their own room. At first, they had wanted to give it to Doris. And Mrs Josser had affirmed mysteriously that they could manage perfectly. She spoke rather as though she and Mr Josser often slept in couches and easy‐chairs for preference. But Doris naturally wouldn�
�t hear of taking their bedroom. After all, it was only going to be for one or two nights at the outside, and then she would be going back to the flat again.
All that had been nearly a month ago, however. And there she was still catching the eight‐five from Ditchfield Station in the morning and getting back again at night in time to have some supper, hear the news and go to bed. It wasn’t much of a life, really. There were too many hours of it spent hanging about on platforms or sitting, and sometimes standing, in trains. But every time she had got her things ready to go, Marshal Goering had done something else to stop her. There were no two ways about it. At the moment London simply wasn’t the right place for a good night’s rest.
Mrs Josser, in consequence, was delighted. Ever since Doris had first left home, Mrs Josser had been devising means of recovering her. And now, with the colossal accident of war to assist her, she had achieved it. Of course, there was Cynthia to spoil everything. But even Cynthia’s presence in the cottage hadn’t justified Mrs Josser’s earlier forebodings. Granted, she didn’t like the girl. And never would. Cynthia’s pair of cherry‐coloured slacks was alone enough to make Mrs Josser wonder whatever people would think that Conservatory Cottage was coming to. But Cynthia did at least have the good sense not to interfere in the housekeeping. She laid tables. She washed‐up. She made her own bed. She made Baby’s. But that was about as far as her contribution went. After that it simply and unostentatiously petered out. And every afternoon – and very often in the mornings as well for that matter – she would go quietly off to her room and sit there polishing her nails, brushing her hair to bring the lustre back into it and reading the Film Weekly. Everything considered, she had settled down into the ways of country life quite remarkably well.
All the same, if it weren’t for Baby, explained Cynthia frequently, she would have gone off and got herself a war‐job. Something where she’d be doing something.
But this morning it wasn’t Cynthia whom they were discussing. It was Mr Josser. He sat there at the head of the breakfast table, his bacon and fried bread uneaten on the plate in front of him. And propped up against the teapot was the letter that the postman had just delivered.
London Belongs to Me Page 83
