The Way Ahead

by Mary Jane Staples

  She and Jonathan said goodbye, Jonathan leaving pocket money for Paula and Phoebe. On their way by bus to Kennington, Jonathan said, ‘Our own house, Emma.’

  ‘Our own house and home, Jonathan, for us and our own family,’ said Emma.

  ‘You reckon you like that idea, Emma?’

  ‘I reckon, Jonathan.’

  In bed with Sammy later, Susie said, ‘I’m really happy for Emma and Jonathan, and you can go to the top of the class for being so good to them, and for saying it cost the firm five hundred and ten pounds instead of the real price of five hundred and fifty.’

  ‘Well, family, y’know, and Emma’s sister Annabelle and her husband Nick have already got their own house,’ said Sammy. ‘But the firm will consider approaches from other nieces and nephews when their time comes. Further, Susie, it’s good business right enough in this case, considering the happy Yank is paying rent of forty-eight quid a month.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Susie.

  ‘Forty-eight smackers per calendar month, Susie. I’ve got to admit it, the blokes from over there are loaded and generous. And Mrs Happy Yank is likewise generous and also friendly.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Susie.

  ‘Just friendly, Susie.’

  ‘And how generous, might I ask?’

  ‘Just a whisky and soda on the two times I popped in, Susie. She calls it a highball. Apart from that, she’s six feet tall and wears boxing gloves lined with iron filings in case a German paratrooper drops in with ideas about a bit of naughty pillaging, if you get me.’

  ‘I get you, Sammy.’

  ‘Susie, even if the war only lasts another year, at that kind of rent we’ll bank nearly six hundred quid, and maintenance costs won’t amount to much, seeing the place is in first-class condition.’

  ‘Just a minute, didn’t you tell me a rent of twelve pounds a month originally?’ said Susie.

  ‘No, twelve a week approximately, Susie.’

  ‘Sammy Adams, at the end of a year that’ll nearly cover what the firm paid for it,’ said Susie.

  ‘Um, a bit more actually,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Then what you’ll get from Jonathan and Emma will be all profit. Sammy, it won’t do.’

  ‘But, Susie, if the war ended next week—’

  ‘Some hopes,’ said Susie.

  ‘The proposition is fair business, Susie, and still doing Emma and Jonathan a good turn.’

  ‘Sammy Adams, I don’t want the firm making that kind of profit at their expense. Jonathan’s serving in the Army and been wounded, and Emma’s working on a farm. They deserve some discount.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘How much discount is it if you lower the firm’s price to four hundred and twenty-five pounds?’

  ‘Susie, that’s enough discount to turn me hair white.’

  ‘I like white hair on men, it makes them look distinguished. So write to Emma and Jonathan and tell them four hundred and twenty-five, not five-ten.’

  ‘Oh, me gawd. Susie, I’ll—’

  ‘Or I’ll divorce you.’

  ‘Susie, d’you want me to have an anxiety collapse?’

  ‘I want you to tell them you’re able to make the reduction after thinking things over. You hear me, Sammy?’

  ‘You’re a hard woman, Susie. Didn’t I already give ’em forty quid discount?’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Susie. ‘Sammy, you’re crafty, you know you’ll still make a handsome profit for the firm, while Emma and Jonathan will think you’re their Father Christmas. You’d like them to love and bless you, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sometimes, Susie, I’m not sure you understand what business is all about.’

  ‘I know what family-mindedness is all about, Sammy, and so do you.’

  ‘Well, all right, Susie,’ said Sammy. ‘You still awake, are you?’

  ‘Of course I’m still awake – here, wait a minute, what’s going on?’

  ‘Just trying my luck at a bit of pillaging, Susie.’

  ‘Where’s my boxing gloves?’ asked Susie.

  Chapter Eight

  BOOTS, AS EXPECTED, was called to London. He took Polly and the twins with him, first phoning his mother to tell her they’d like to stay for a couple of nights. Chinese Lady couldn’t hide her pleasure at the prospect of seeing the twins, who in some confusing way were the uncle and aunt of the two children of Lizzy’s elder daughter, Annabelle. Those children were actually older than Gemma and James. I just can’t work it out, she said on the phone to Boots. Don’t bother to, old lady, said Boots, just accept they’re two more additions to your family. But it’s not natural, an uncle and aunt being younger than their niece and nephew, said Chinese Lady, and is it legal? Hope so, said Boots, or I’ll get locked up. Chinese Lady asked if that was supposed to be funny. It won’t be, said Boots, if a policeman comes knocking.

  That made Chinese Lady smile, but she didn’t admit to it.

  Boots drove up in the morning, and dropped Polly and the twins at Selfridges, where she was going to take them to lunch in the restaurant, and then shop for them and herself at the expense of clothing coupons. Whatever damage had been wrought in the West End by air raids, no effort had been spared by shopkeepers in keeping up appearances. Flags were flying on some buildings, and the sun, rising obligingly at dawn, was still bright. It helped Oxford Street to cheerfully receive strolling American GIs and hefty American WACS, although there was no shop that was not limited in what it could offer. With some wartime visitors, it was being there that counted.

  Boots, out of the car, brought the twins onto the pavement.

  ‘Oh, thanks, Daddy,’ said Gemma.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Boots.

  ‘Can’t you come in the shop with us?’ asked James.

  ‘Unfortunately, old chap, I’m wanted by some gentlemen who are more important than I am,’ said Boots.

  ‘Oh, blow,’ said James.

  ‘Daddy, you do look ever so nice,’ said Gemma, and Polly, noting a passing WAAF officer giving Boots a glance, thought it’s a little more than that, Gemma. Boots, distinctively masculine in his uniform, was always a target for feminine eyes. Even his long legs had their own kind of sex appeal. Very much.

  ‘Daddy, can’t you just come and have lunch with us?’ asked Gemma, and she and James gazed up at their tall father. Boots thought both of them irresistible. He looked at his watch. Twelve-twenty. His appointment was for two o’clock, and he’d been told he’d be free at four, when he would pick Polly and the twins up from Selfridges.

  ‘Well, if we had lunch immediately,’ he said, ‘I could have it with you.’

  ‘Oh, come on, then, Daddy,’ said James.

  ‘Yes, do join us, old sport,’ said Polly.

  So they had lunch together in Selfridges. The menu was limited, but no-one complained. The twins put aside their natural fidgets, sat up straight and exercised fairly faultless behaviour. Boots took note of women’s dresses, coats, hairstyles and hats. The dresses and coats were square-shouldered, hairstyles composed of lacquered curled rolls, and hats had sharp angles. The overall effect wasn’t feminine enough for Boots. He looked at Polly. Her light spring coat had soft shoulders, her hair was softly waved, and her hat of soft light brown velour was round and brimmed. A country woman’s hat. Damned if she isn’t the most feminine woman in the place, he thought, my ageless, vivacious Polly who made a name for herself as an ambulance driver in that mud-drowning war of ’14–18. He thought of Emily. There was always a little pain present whenever Emily came into his mind. Gone with only half her life lived, and she had lived every day in spirited fashion from the time she was old enough to realize that in Walworth you had to fight elements and circumstances. And so she became a holy terror long before she became a wife and a godsend.

  ‘Daddy, I’m talking to you,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Sorry, little poppet, what were you saying, then?’

  ‘You’re not eating your pudding,’ said Gemma.

  ‘He’s studying the ta
lent,’ said Polly.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked James, digging into red jelly.

  ‘Oh, a man’s observation of what’s around him,’ said Polly.

  ‘What’s that mean?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘I asked that,’ said James.

  ‘Well, I can ask it too, can’t I?’ said Gemma, eating a wartime version of college pudding.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ said James.

  ‘Yes, I do, if I want,’ said Gemma.

  Boots and Polly exchanged glances across the table. Each read the other’s thoughts. By a miracle, they were parents of twins articulate, bossy, argumentative and forward at two and a half. In the middle of a fiendishly destructive war they had in their mid-forties given the world two little angels.

  Boots thought then of little Jewish children being gassed and cremated by the hundred. Could that possibly be true?

  In a house in Bloomsbury, very much like other houses in that area of pre-war literary giants, Boots was received by two Intelligence officers he already knew, and introduced to an Army major and an American colonel. As the man who had spent so much time gaining the confidence of Corporal Hans Thurber, he was required to give his considered opinion of the German and to relate everything that Thurber had said.

  ‘It’ll be everything I can remember,’ said Boots, ‘and most of it already known.’

  ‘Go ahead, Colonel Adams. You can include repetition.’

  Boots said that first of all he believed what Thurber himself believed. At no time did he hint that he felt his brother was suffering delusions. Far from it. He was truly convinced his brother had reached such a traumatic state that he sought some kind of relief in confessing to participating in the elimination of the Jews of Auschwitz concentration camp, while at the same time asking Hans to keep it all to himself.

  Boots’s recitation of hearsay and of Thurber’s confidence was detailed. It was a fact that the man never contradicted himself or gave a different version of any part of his brother’s confession. The Intelligence officers could probably confirm he never varied in anything they had listened to themselves.

  Boots’s lengthy exposition turned into a question-and-answer phase, and that turned into a discussion on whether or not there was a precedent, that of taking hearsay seriously.

  Colonel Lawrence, the American, said, ‘Gentlemen, far-fetched though most of it is, I’m taking all of it damned seriously.’

  ‘On the face of it, and if we can believe it,’ said Major Dipworth of Security, ‘it’s not merely serious, it’s infamous to the final degree.’

  ‘God damn it that there’s no proof, nothing to show my Secretary of State,’ said Colonel Lawrence.

  ‘Colonel Adams,’ said an Intelligence officer, ‘have you thought about one particular thing? If it’s true that thousands of Jews have entered this concentration camp every month to be murdered or worked to death, and that similar death camps exist, isn’t it odd that apparently not one man or woman has escaped to give the facts to the world? Allied prisoners of war, held in every kind of restricted circumstances, produce regular escapees, and these are men who at least know they aren’t going to be murdered.’

  ‘Perhaps some Jews have escaped,’ said Boots, ‘but failed to cross a border.’

  ‘But it’s reasonable, isn’t it, to expect one to have shown up in the free world?’

  ‘Very reasonable,’ said Boots.

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s a question I can’t answer,’ said Boots. ‘All I’d say is that despite obvious doubts, I’d recommend some investigation. We all regard thousands murdered every month as appallingly unbelievable. So did Corporal Thurber. But he believed the unbelievable, and his belief crucified him.’

  The discussion went on, and Boots knew that both Colonel Lawrence and Major Dipworth were in favour of an investigation, and that the Intelligence officers were under pressure to accept hearsay as evidence. Nothing altered the fact that they were dealing with hearsay. The meeting had been another going-over of everything that had come to light in the first place, and no actual facts had emerged, only a repeat of words spoken by a man now dead.

  The meeting ended promptly at four. Colonel Lawrence, saying goodbye to Boots, added, ‘Glad to have met you, Colonel Adams. It’s my guess from listening to you that your guys and ours are going to run up against a pack of howling SS hyenas one day, the bastards.’

  ‘And what will your guys do?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Hang ’em on the spot, using a slow rope.’

  ‘I think ours might lend yours a hand,’ said Boots.

  He picked Polly and the twins up at Selfridges. Polly was minus a certain amount of money and a quantity of clothing coupons. On the plus side, she was in possession of parcels. The twins reunited excitedly again with their father before scrambling into the car, where they enjoyed a bit of a free-for-all in working out who was to sit where. Boots relieved Polly of the parcels, and then drove through the West End and over Waterloo Bridge on his way to Red Post Hill.

  He reached the bomb-devastated Elephant and Castle.

  ‘The Hun passed this way,’ said Polly.

  ‘With his rampaging elephants,’ said Boots.

  ‘Did the Hun ride elephants?’ murmured Polly.

  From the back, James asked, ‘What’s that you said, Daddy?’

  ‘Daddy said elephants,’ shouted Gemma.

  ‘Is James deaf?’ asked Polly, as Boots drove along Walworth Road, still as familiar to him as Chinese Lady’s chiding voice.

  ‘Crumbs, Mummy, he must be deaf if he didn’t hear Daddy say elephants,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Daddy didn’t just say elephants,’ protested James.

  ‘Rampaging was the word,’ said Polly, ‘which means running wild, like two little harum-scarums I know.’

  ‘Who’s them, Mummy?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘Guess,’ said Polly.

  ‘Gemma, I bet you’re one of them,’ said James.

  ‘I bet I’m not,’ said Gemma.

  Boots passed Browning Street, and a swift glance told him of severe damage some way down on the right of the street. Polly lightly touched his knee.

  ‘Old places make sad old ruins,’ she said.

  ‘Well, Germany’s bomb-laden chickens are coming home to roost now, Polly, with a vengeance,’ said Boots. American and RAF raids were devastating German towns and cities with increasing regularity. Dr Goebbels, Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, made broadcasts to the effect that all enemy bombing raids that killed innocent Germans were foul and disgusting. Oh, dear, what a bleedin’ shame, Dr Gobbler, said the London cockneys who’d been on the receiving end of German bombs.

  Approaching East Street, Polly saw a plump woman turning into the main road from the market.

  ‘Boots, stop,’ she said, ‘there’s Susie’s mother.’

  Boots saw the woman too, and pulled up. Mrs Lily Bessie Brown, always called Bessie, spotted the open car and its occupants. Motherly, equable and eternally comforting, she came out of her usual placidity to give a little shout and to hasten over, carrying her shopping bag.

  ‘Oh, bless me,’ she beamed, her round face showing pleasure, ‘it’s you two. Goodness, I haven’t seen you for I don’t know how long. I heard you got married, and me and Jim was that pleased for you.’ Jim was her husband.

  ‘How are you both, Bessie?’ asked Boots, and Mrs Brown looked at him, at his uniform, and his smile, and thought what a friendly man he always was.

  ‘Oh, we’re handsome, Mr Adams, as you might say, we moved back to Walworth from Peckham when the air raids stopped, being fond of that old house you grew up in before we took it over. My, Mrs Adams, don’t you look nice? Jim always said he didn’t know a nicer or more fashionable lady.’

  ‘Bessie,’ smiled Polly, ‘I have my other moments.’ There was no side with Polly, she took everyone as she found them. All upper class prejudices, if she had ever had them to any obvious degree, had vanished during her time among the Tommies of the Great
War. She liked her sister-in-law and Susie’s brother and sister, and she liked their parents, two cockneys of the old resilient kind, born in the time of Queen Victoria. ‘You haven’t met our children, have you? The imp is Gemma, the scamp is James. They’re twins.’

  ‘Hello, lady,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Hello, lady,’ said James.

  ‘My word, hello,’ smiled Mrs Brown, who knew about the twins. She was part of the grapevine nurtured by the Adams family. ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’

  ‘Daddy, can I say “same to you”?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Boots.

  ‘Same to you, please,’ said Gemma to Mrs Brown.

  ‘How many birthdays you had?’ asked James.

  ‘No, you can’t ask that,’ said Polly.

  ‘Mummy, he’s already done it,’ said Gemma.

  ‘I’ve had a lot more than I can count,’ smiled Mrs Brown, sixty. ‘Little pickles you’ve got, Mrs Adams, bless ’em.’

  ‘How’s Cassie?’ asked Boots. He had fond memories of Mrs Brown’s chirpy daughter-in-law.

  ‘Oh, she’s coming home soon, after all them years in the country with her dad and the children,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘She wrote saying she was having a chronic spell of being homesick, and was going to chance air raids starting up again. I’ll be that glad to have her back, I must say. Well, it really is nice seeing you two after all this time, and meeting your twins.’

  ‘What about Freddy?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Oh, lor’, he’s in that awful Burma,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and goodness knows when he’ll get home, but Cassie’s bearing up remarkable. Jim and me hope you and all the Army can get the war finished quick, Mr Adams, or it’ll wear everyone out and make them white cliffs of Dover fall in the sea.’

  People passed by, traffic buzzed, trams clanged, and all that together with the beaming air of this cheerful cockney woman brought back to Boots the atmosphere of the Walworth of his former years. It was part of him, Walworth, its cockneys and its bustling heart, and war hadn’t changed the place, although it had knocked it about a bit.