What Was Promised

by Tobias Hill

  ‘I always liked this place. The thing about it is, it’s peaceful. I come in here on Sundays and I get a whole room to myself. I don’t get that indoors. Sundays there’s eighteen in my kitchen, all my boys and their little ones. Or now it’s the dining room, and Sunday clothes on all of them. As if that makes it any better. Talk about a monkey house, it isn’t in it. But here . . . listen. Peace and quiet. That’s all a fellow wants, isn’t it? This is my own little corner of heaven.’

  When Cyril grins, smoke escapes his teeth. The confessional moment has passed: he is at ease with himself again. ‘How are your girls?’ he asks, avuncular, and Michael thinks, Skin and bones, but ‘Growing up,’ is what he says.

  ‘I always wanted girls.’ Cyril points his lit ember. ‘Your older one,’ he says, ‘Floss. She takes after you. Same look. Spirited, ain’t she? You ought to keep an eye on that.’

  These people, Michael thinks. These London men – women too – who see fit to tell him his business. So puffed up with unearned worth, they are, so full of themselves it’s a wonder there can be any room left for the shit they spout. ‘I don’t see the harm in spirit,’ he says, and when Cyril only shrugs, Michael gets the takings out and puts them on the table.

  ‘Not bad,’ says Cyril. ‘Better than Rob. Better than Ted, and he’s been with me since before. Too polite, that’s their trouble. You could all do better still, with the spring blooms here.’

  He leaves the money where it is. It isn’t going anywhere.

  ‘No joy with the other line?’

  Michael grimaces: it is the nearest thing he has to a smile. He reaches for his winter coat, mantled over his chair, and brings out – with a jeweller’s care – not flowers, but other bright things. A phial of Guerlain’s Shalimar; two signet rings; a medal in its satined case; a Merchant Navy sweetheart brooch; a French peach in a handkerchief; a pair of kidskin driving gloves; a three-gill hammered hip-flask; a rope of mussel pearls; and a folding knife, small as a little finger, one pearly side inscribed, MISS MILNE.

  Michael quarters the goods unequally. ‘Blossie,’ he says, as he tidies up the lion’s share, then puts names to the others. ‘Adam. Luke. The rings from your foreign boy.’

  ‘Leveret, his name is. He’s neat hands,’ Cyril says, but Michael says nothing. He doesn’t care to learn their names.

  Cyril goes through it all, muttering and figuring: his neat-handed boys will get their earnings later, round the back of the pawnbrokers in Earl Street. He swigs the flask and makes a face. He pushes the medal away. For Gallantry in Saving Life, it says, and there is a name, too, Hubert Loughlin, in tiny letters round the rim.

  ‘No call for that,’ Cyril says.

  ‘I told him as much.’

  ‘Blossie, was it? I’ll have a word. That’s more trouble than it’s worth. It’s always the best boys go too far. What’s this, a penknife?’

  ‘Fruit knife.’

  ‘Looks like silver.’

  ‘Sheffield marks. It’s nice work.’

  Cyril looks up quick. ‘And what would you know about that?’

  ‘I know a good thing when I see it.’

  ‘Do you, now? Well, it might be worth a bob or two.’

  Cyril takes the money like a diner who has saved the best until last. He rakes it up, counts it out, pockets his cut and pushes the rest – a third of the take and a fence’s tip – back to Michael.

  ‘That for last month. More next, if you keep it up. You’re turning out alright, Mickey. You’re coming along. It might be you could handle a bit more responsibility. You could square things with the boys yourself, if you know what you’re doing. I wouldn’t miss them hanging round the shop. I get all kinds in now. It gives the wrong impression, the boys. There’d be extra in it for you. What would you say to that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say no,’ Michael says.

  ‘No promises. You better know what you’re about, I won’t straighten it with you if you pay over the odds. Well, we’ll try it. See how you go.’

  ‘Mr Noakes,’ Michael says, choosing his words one by one, ‘I can do more for you, if you’ll give me the chance.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you the squeaky wheel tonight?’ Noakes says, and looks at his watch. ‘You won’t say no to a game, either? Same place as last time. Same crowd.’

  ‘I’d be delighted.’

  ‘No hurry. Not throwing-out time yet. See off your drink, why don’t you? A shame to let it go to waste.’

  And he opens Miss Milne’s knife, admires the tiny blade, and cuts a flank off the peach.

  *

  Downstairs, a small woman sits alone in the Birdcage’s saloon. Her name is Dora Lazarus: she is the Jew watchmaker’s wife. Dora is promising herself she isn’t going to talk too much.

  She talks when she’s nervous. She thinks when she’s nervous, too. Sometimes she talks to herself, and sometimes her thoughts fly away from her. When she’s happy she sings and doesn’t think of anything. Solly teases her about it. Dora is singing, he says. She must be kissing or cooking.

  She isn’t singing now. This isn’t where she belongs. What will people think of her, alone in a public house? The Birdcage is full of men. Not quiet men like her Solly, but loud ones, like those he works with in Petticoat Lane; like the Banana King, Clarence Malcolm, though really Clarence is good as gold. Besides, the Lane is not the Birdcage. There is fresh air in the Lane – there is room to shout – there is something to shout about! A market man has to shout because who would buy if he didn’t? Who would know he was alive? The shouting makes him what he is. He shouts the words his father shouted in the streets before the war. That is a useful kind of noise.

  Even Solly shouts sometimes. Dora has seen him try. The right time, all the time! he shouts. He isn’t very good at it. He’s too shy for shouting.

  Now there are men looking at her. Dora can feel it. Some of them she knows by sight. They are her neighbours, she supposes, from the Columbia Buildings. She wonders what they think of her, coming here, into their place.

  She wishes they wouldn’t look.

  And why is it called the Birdcage? Dora had a birdcage once, with a pretty bird in it. The people in the Birdcage are not pretty birds. There are so few other women: Mrs Joel the publican, and a barmaid who looks pale and two old ladies in a corner. One of them has a pint of beer. And all the men are talking, smoking, drinking, laughing, singing (not like birds), making noise with their boots and glasses, elbows, tables, and the piano (which is full of sour notes). All at the same time!

  It makes Dora wish she could shut her eyes. It makes her want to talk and talk, until the men are all drowned out or fall silent or just die around her. She wouldn’t care if they did.

  ‘I don’t mean that,’ she whispers, and bites her lip.

  She says nothing after that. She sits with her handbag in her lap and waits for the stranger to come back.

  The Birdcage was the stranger’s suggestion. Dora wanted to object, but she couldn’t think of anywhere else. They might have met at Bernadette’s, their only mutual friend, but Bernadette has gone to Camden to cook for her brother-in-law. And a park would be too cold, and – also – it might seem romantic. And after dark the parks are locked. On Sundays everything is locked. The only things that are unlocked are the drinking places, and the churches, and the hospitals.

  The barmaid comes to wipe the table. Dora turns away and looks longingly out of the window. The glass is frosted, except where lettering is cut into it: Dora looks through the letters.

  There is a boy out there, a poor boy in poor clothes, looking through the same letters into the saloon’s light and warmth. Their eyes meet and Dora smiles. She thinks, I want to be out there, and you want to be in here.

  The boy doesn’t smile back. The glass distorts his face: it fractures and doubles him.

  When she breaks his gaze she finds the stranger standing over her.

  ‘There you go, Mrs Lazarus,’ he says, and he puts a glass in front of her and sits down with his own. �
�Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers,’ Dora says.

  The stranger drinks off half a pint without even stopping for breath. The muscles of his throat work. He’s younger than she is. His name is Thomas. Bernadette says he’s a good boy.

  ‘You must be thirsty,’ Dora says, and wishes the words back before they’re even out of her, so that they trail off on thirsty, but Thomas smiles a nice smile.

  ‘Sorry about that. We don’t get much aboard, you see. Water, water everywhere. It were better in the war, but there’s precious much chance of anything now.’

  ‘I see,’ Dora says, although she doesn’t quite, Thomas’s accent is strange to her, and besides, it doesn’t matter what she says: Thomas has been distracted by the need to stand aside. Two more women have come in, seeking shelter from the coarseness of the public bar. Silver shines on Thomas’s coat as he finds his seat again. He wears a badge, Dora sees, its metal buffed to a high polish: a crown and knotted rope embracing two letters: MN.

  ‘How’s Bernie, then?’

  ‘Bernie?’ Dora asks, but she is stupid with nerves: he means Bernadette Malcolm, of course; they have nobody else in common. ‘Oh yes, Bernie is very well! We are neighbours here, and my husband is friends with her husband. He is a Banana King, except there are few bananas, only for children and women with child. They are market sellers together, in Petticoat Lane.’

  ‘I know, she wrote to me all about it. She’s lovely writing, you know, look.’

  Thomas gets out a paperback, opens it, removes a picture postcard. On one side are four Scenes of London. On the other Dora can make out his name and rank, Thomas Cowlishaw, Leading Steward, written in faultless copperplate under the King’s postmarked head.

  ‘Got a proper schooling out there, didn’t she? Always told us she were brought up British. Writes better than what I do. Shame she weren’t around tonight.’

  His voice is full of admiration. Dora has to smile. Thomas catches her eye and blinks.

  ‘I’m not soft on her.’

  ‘Oh no! Dora says, ‘No –’

  Thomas takes another drink. When he puts down the glass his ears are scarlet, but he meets her eye again and smiles.

  How brave, Dora thinks.

  ‘Well, if things had been different. Mostly it were men only we had out of Montego Bay. She made a change, her and her fellow and the little shrimp. Is he well, the lad?’

  ‘Jem. He is not a shrimp now. He’s going to be tall, like his father.’

  ‘Right. Still, we had a laugh.’

  ‘She told me that,’ Dora says. ‘That you had a laugh.’

  Thomas busies himself putting the card away. ‘She says in there you need a favour.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dora says, ‘yes,’ – but she frowns. The favour has been a long way from her thoughts. She is drinking with a handsome man, looking at a handsome man. She has been enjoying him . . . as if she has come to the horrible Birdcage for her own enjoyment. She is not here for the joy of it! She is ashamed of herself, that she could have forgotten that.

  ‘Something taking, she says?’

  ‘Yes; no,’ Dora says, ‘well,’ and she clutches at her handbag. ‘Bernadette told me that you are sailing east, sometimes?’

  ‘For my sins. Not much of a swap for the old route. Give me the West Indies any day. We’re back up the Baltic in the morning.’

  ‘I need something taken to Danzig.’

  Thomas shakes his head. ‘No Danzig any more. Gdansk, they call it now. Because, you know, it being Polish.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Dora says. ‘Gdansk.’

  She retreats into her chair. Her heart is going too fast. Like her thoughts and words when she’s afraid, it is running away with itself. But Thomas is talking too much too, his cheeks a little flushed with drink. A young man ashore, hitting his stride.

  ‘It’s Russians we’re taking, Russians in and us lot out. There’s Scots still there, don’t ask me why; the Germans had them all locked up. To be honest with you I could do without Russians on board. Politics, that’s all it is with them. It’s all tommy rot to me. Jerry’s got nothing on them. I’ve heard they’re locking it all down soon, their share of Germany, Poland, the lot. It’s them makes the rules there now. Nothing goes in, no one gets out, that’s what the lads are saying. Next thing you know we’ll be at war with them, and that’ll be short and sweet, won’t it? One mystery bomb and bang! We’ll all be cinder.’

  Dora opens her handbag and takes out the photographs.

  There are four of them. She has more at home, but even four would be a loss. Four is the maximum that she can bring herself to relinquish.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘My family.’

  Thomas puts down his drink. His rubs his mouth with finger and thumb, as if cleaning it. ‘Right,’ he says, finally.

  He cocks his head at the pictures, then turns one. ‘This is good. Your father, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You take after him. He looks well-to-do.’

  ‘He is a doctor,’ Dora says, with a spark of pride. ‘His name is there, you see? It’s small, I hope you can read it.’

  ‘Gottfried,’ Thomas reads, ‘Rosen.’

  ‘Gottfried Rosen, yes. And here, my mother, Sophia Rosen. My little brother, Hermann. And here, this is all of us. You see me, there? This is in the street where we live. I have written the address on the back, here. Third floor, 41 Jopengasse. And this tower, here, this is St Mary’s. This is a, what do you say? You can see this from anywhere.’

  ‘A landmark,’ Thomas says. ‘You won’t have seen them for a bit, I suppose.’

  ‘Not since we came here,’ Dora says. ‘Not since before.’

  ‘You’ll miss them, then,’ Thomas says, awkwardly, and Dora says that yes, she does, awkward herself: what can it be but awkward, when one gives the only answer to a question that need not be asked?

  ‘I don’t know where they are,’ she says.

  Thomas doesn’t look surprised. His brow is furrowed in thought. It makes him look older. The saloon’s electric lights reveal the scalp under his hair.

  ‘You’ll have written to them?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t hear from them. Not for seven years. Of course I think they must be dead. It is a long time now, so probably . . . I see the news, about the things the Germans did. But sometimes I think, perhaps they are gone away. So many people, you know, it is just that they are not where they were before. No one is where they belong. Perhaps they went away and never heard where we are, either, if they never read my letters.’

  ‘Mrs Lazarus . . .’

  ‘Dora,’ Dora says, ‘please.’

  ‘Dora. What are you asking of me?’

  ‘I want you – I am asking you – please, to take these to Danzig – I mean Gdansk – and ask people. Show these to people. My father is a doctor. People know him in Danzig. Gdansk. In Jopengasse. If there is nothing there is nothing, but I must do what I can. I have to know. I can pay you, look, I have money, here –’

  She is still going through her handbag when Thomas takes the photographs. He gets the paperback back out, takes the pictures, one by one, and stows them away, with the card of Bernadette’s.

  ‘Oh thank you,’ Dora says.

  ‘Put your money away, won’t you?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I can’t say more than that.’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  She thinks, Oh God, I’m going to cry, but then Thomas stands, and she takes the chance to look down and gather herself.

  ‘Let’s have another, love.’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ Dora says. ‘I can’t, I must get back.’

  ‘Next time, then. When I bring you news.’

  ‘My husband thinks it’s foolish. My coming here. My asking you.’

  ‘What’s foolish about it?’

  She looks up at him. ‘The hope,’ she says.

  *

&
nbsp; ‘Soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the Hispaniola had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure . . .’

  Camden Town. The Banana King’s wife is warming up saltfish and rice. Next door she can hear her man hammering, and his brother reading to her boy.

  Bernadette Malcolm hopes the neighbours don’t complain. It’s late to be cooking and hammering, on the Sabbath of all days: but it’s cold again tonight, Neville already has a chest, the window sash is broken and he won’t fix things for himself. So her Clarence has to do it.

  Out of the panes beside the stove Bernadette can see a bit of churchyard, the trees around the gate lit up in a wash of lamppost light. Cars are parked up for the night. This is a decent neighbourhood. Neville’s rooms are let to him through a friend he flew with in the war. Neville doesn’t keep it up but it’s a good place for him. Bernadette doesn’t want the neighbours talking.

  It isn’t Neville’s fault it’s late. It’s wrong to blame him, but she does. The saltfish is still cold and the gas thin as a ghost. They should have eaten hours ago! But Clarence got in late from Petticoat Lane, and then there was so much to bring – soda, rags and vinegar, and the food she’s made for now and later, and cord and nails for the sash – and then the buses were so slow . . .

  Bernadette aspires to have a sunny disposition. When she thinks it – sunny disposition – she sees a painting of herself, done like a Ministry of Food poster. The painted Bernadette is giving out handfuls of sunshine (golden-rayed, unrationed, pure) to the grateful crowds around her, with cheerfulness, and dignity. But cheerfulness, she finds, is hard to do with dignity, and worry ruins both. Like this, today: the too-late eating. Clarence hammering.

  Worry makes Bernadette fierce. Her worries harden her.

  She thinks, Camden is too far. On Sunday nights, leastways. I’ll tell Clarence for next time. Neville is a man, isn’t he? So let him look out for himself. Her boy should be in bed by now, not having his head filled with pirate stories.

  ‘Come away, Hawkins, he would say; Come and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Here’s Cap’n Flint – I calls my parrot Cap’n Flint, after the famous buccaneer – here’s Cap’n Flint predicting success to our v’yage – wasn’t you, Cap’n?’