After the Mourning

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Don’t we all?’

  He looked up at me sharply, wondering, I could see in his face, what someone like me might be. Was I a very pale black or just a dark white man? It’s a look I’ve seen many, many times.

  ‘Well, the fact is, Mr Hancock,’ he said at length, ‘you’ve been up to the camp a few times and it’s said you know these Gypsies.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘His Majesty and his armed forces would therefore be very grateful, Mr Hancock, if you could keep your eyes and ears open for any unusual people, the Feldmans and especially Martin Stojka in your future dealings up in Epping Forest.’ He leaned in close to my face and said, ‘They trust you. You buried one of them, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You know the horsemen from Beckton, Horatio and George Gordon Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’ He knew a lot about me, this Military Policeman. I frowned. ‘Why do you want this Martin Stojka again, Sergeant?’

  ‘Because he’s a German,’ the sergeant said levelly. ‘He’s also, it’s said, vicious and dangerous. Anyway, all Germans have to be detained, you know that.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Just keep your eyes peeled, Mr Hancock,’ he said, as he put his cup down on one of the coffin stands, then rose to his feet. ‘My lads and I are always about. If you see or hear anything you should pass it on immediately. And don’t try to do anything yourself, don’t be a hero. Whatever sub-group these people might belong to, whatever stories may be going around about what Hitler is doing to them, they are first and foremost Germans and the enemy. If attacked, they might kill you.’

  I thought about telling him the story of Doris’s father-in-law Herschel Rosen, but thought better of it. That poor old Herschel had suffered in that awful camp they’d sent him to wasn’t going to impress or soften this bloke. He was, or rather I thought he was at the time, one of those who goes beyond patriotism into something that is an enemy of any sort of understanding. But I said I’d do as he asked and bade him goodbye cheerfully enough.

  Aggie, who was almost breathless with excitement, watched him and his men go with a sigh on her now painted lips. ‘What a dish!’ She turned to me. ‘Oh, Frank, are you going to be seeing him again?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I said, and at the time, I meant it.

  ‘Oh, you mean git!’ Aggie cried.

  I walked out into the yard, passing Walter on his way to the front of the shop with more wood. Arthur, who had only just arrived, was looking into Alexander McCulloch’s coffin with a frown.

  ‘He out getting a suntan, Mr H?’ he said.

  ‘Something like that,’ I replied, and then I asked Arthur for a fag, which he gave me without further ado. We stood beside the not-so-dear departed, smoking in silence. Even the back of our building, which had not been touched by the blast, was filthy and studded with shards of glass.

  Chapter Four

  Later that afternoon, once I’d screwed the lid down on Alexander McCulloch’s coffin and my lads and I had boarded up most of the windows, I went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea. I knew that my sisters were out and I had thought that the Duchess was asleep but then I saw her thin, black-clad figure standing motionless at the kitchen window and I said, ‘Penny for ’em?’

  She turned and smiled. She’s seventy years old, my mother, and still beautiful. ‘My thoughts? Well, Francis, I was thinking that someone ought to go down to Canning Town for some sweets.’

  I went over to the kitchen range and lit the gas underneath the kettle. ‘Sweets? You’ll be lucky. What do you want sweets for?’

  ‘I’d like some Victory Vs to soothe this cough,’ she said. ‘I would also like some sweets for a journey I intend to make.’

  Like me, the Duchess is tall and thin, so I never have to look down at her. ‘Where are you planning on going, Duchess?’

  ‘Well, that poor woman who lost her daughter, Betty Lee, she invited me to see her other daughter’s attraction, the Head. You remember, Francis.’

  I did, although I couldn’t really see my mother putting herself out so much as to go all the way to Epping Forest just to see some side-show.

  ‘Nancy and I have decided to go tomorrow afternoon and I thought it might be nice for us to have some barley sugar or something like that for the journey.’

  I’d had my suspicions, of course, but now I was certain. If the Duchess was going up to Epping Forest with Nancy, she wanted to see the ‘miracle’. She wouldn’t go directly against Father Burton’s orders, of course, she’d use the mysterious Head as a cover story and be perfectly calm about telling the priest so, when eventually she had to.

  ‘So, if you have time, Francis, I would be obliged if you could go to Murkoff’s for me,’ she said. ‘Their sweets are so much better than anyone else’s.’

  ‘Duchess,’ I said, ‘the chances of my finding some sweets even at Murkoff’s—’

  ‘Well, if you don’t find them there, then maybe you won’t mind trying elsewhere in Rathbone market,’ the Duchess said, as she turned pointedly away from me. ‘You could even see your friend who lives there, Miss Jacobs, couldn’t you? I’m sure she’d be glad of the company.’

  Ever since my mother had met my ‘friend’ Hannah Jacobs, some weeks before this, I’d wondered how much she’d worked out. Aggie, I knew, was fully aware of what Hannah was and what she meant to me. But the Duchess? Well, I knew she knew that Hannah was Jewish, and I suspected she had knowledge of some amount of ‘involvement’ on my part. I could be pretty sure, however, that she didn’t know that Hannah was a prostitute. If she had I do believe that Rathbone Market and even Murkoff’s would have been very much out of bounds. That she waved me off when I left, with a smile, was also a strong clue.

  ‘I’ll come with you and Nan tomorrow,’ I said. ‘It’s like a madhouse up round that pond and I’ve no work on in the afternoon.’

  The Duchess coughed, then smiled again.

  ‘Eva Feldman’s parents disappeared, so they say,’ Hannah said, as she pulled her dress over her slip, then lit a fag. ‘She got together with old Heinrich, who already had a brother over here, in Bethnal Green. That was three years ago.’ She looked down at the floor sadly. ‘Jews can’t leave Germany now.’

  ‘Hannah, love, I would never tell the Military Police or anyone else where the Feldmans might be, even if I knew,’ I said. We both dress very quickly after one of our ‘afternoons’ so I was sitting on the bed by this time with my shirt and everything else done up to my neck.

  ‘I know.’ Hannah isn’t a pretty woman, she’s seen far too much of life for that, but in spite of her age – forty-seven like me – and the fact that she dyes her lovely brown hair yellow, she’s beautiful. Many years before I met her, Hannah left her very religious family, disowned by them, to marry a Gentile boy. But that didn’t work out so she had to make her living any way she could. At first she was literally on the streets, but now she lives with a couple of other ‘old girls’, who work in the house of an elderly abortionist called Dot Harris. I am one of Hannah’s few regulars. I am also, I like to think, something more on occasion too.

  ‘Anyway, I got the feeling that the person the sergeant really wanted was the Gypsy, Stojka,’ I said. ‘He made him sound dangerous.’

  ‘Like the Feldmans?’ Hannah shook her head. ‘You know, the Commies say that the Nazis have been killing the Gypsies for years. This Stojka has probably run here for his life.’

  ‘But, as the sergeant said, they’re all German,’ I said, unconvinced even as I uttered the words. The Communists, or Commies as many call them, are strong in this part of London. Committed to the betterment of the working classes, a lot of Commies are Jews and they are, in my experience, very well informed. Hannah knows a few, and if they were saying that the Nazis were killing Gypsies I was inclined to believe them. After all, even if Joe Stalin chooses to ally himself with Hitler that doesn’t mean every Commie on the planet thinks likewise. Doris’s husband Alfie, for one, thinks that
the Soviet leader is simply playing for time.

  ‘Well, if you don’t go up to the forest again for a bit, you won’t have to get involved in none of it, will you?’ Hannah said.

  ‘I’ve said I’ll take my mother and sister up there tomorrow afternoon,’ I replied. And then I added, ‘To see this Gypsy girl having her “vision” hopefully.’

  ‘Virgin Mary supposed to be, isn’t it?’ Hannah said.

  ‘That’s certainly what people want it to be and, to be fair, the girl Lily did call whatever it was “Our Lady”. But putting aside for a moment the fact that I can’t believe in such things, there’s something not right about it all.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I picked up a fag I’d rolled earlier and stuck it into my mouth. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘when some old girl from Canning Town started jumping around about it being the Virgin Mary, Lily said, “No”.’

  ‘What changed her mind?’

  ‘I don’t know whether anything did.’ If my memory served me right, Lily had just stopped saying it wasn’t the Virgin Mary. She had also, I remembered, stopped her brother-in-law saying something too.

  ‘Maybe it’s a swindle,’ Hannah said, after a pause. ‘You know how dodgy Gypsies can be.’

  ‘I thought you felt sorry for them,’ I said, as I lit my fag.

  ‘I don’t think they should be hurt,’ Hannah said, ‘but I’m connected to the real world too. Gyppos are dodgy, H. Talking of which, they have paid you for that girl’s funeral, haven’t they?’

  Exactly like Doris. ‘Yes,’ I said impatiently – and this time I was telling the truth.

  ‘Good.’ Hannah smiled. ‘So, you’re off to Eagle Pond tomorrow, then, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She sat down in the small hard chair beside the range and sighed. ‘Well, maybe I’ll take a trip out there meself. Get a bit of country air. Maybe our paths will cross. I should at least see this thing for meself.’

  ‘Not likely to be much to see,’ I said. ‘Lily hasn’t had any visions since the first one.’

  ‘A lot of people are living in hope that she does,’ Hannah said. ‘I should see what there is to it.’

  ‘Yes, you could come with us . . .’

  ‘No.’ Nan wouldn’t be any too pleased, but the Duchess, in blissful ignorance of Hannah’s calling, would be charmed. After all, I am forty-seven and I’ve never been married, which means that my mother is willing to consider most women for me now. The religion, of course, is a stumbling-block, but that isn’t nearly as big a problem as Hannah’s low feelings about herself. I’ve proposed several times and she’s always refused me. She reckons she isn’t good enough to marry a decent man like myself. What, she wonders, would she say to my mates and my neighbours if they ask her what she did before we met? She’s also afraid, and with good reason, that one or other of them might recognise her. And that is a problem even I must accept. ‘No, I’ll pop along in the afternoon and if we meet we meet.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Anyway, I might, if I’m lucky, see that military copper your Aggie was so sweet on,’ Hannah said mischievously. I’d told her about that and we’d laughed together just before we’d had our little bit of passion. ‘He sounded lovely.’

  ‘Mmm.’ I hung my head in the way I am inclined to do when I’m upset, even though I knew Hannah was only pulling my leg. Looking the way I do, I sometimes find big, fair, younger blokes intimidating. They can so easily look down their noses at a ‘wog’ like me – and I can’t retaliate. I have nothing to look down my nose at them for.

  Hannah smiled. ‘Oh, don’t get down in the dumps, H,’ she said. ‘I’d rather have you than some bloke who spends his time out hunting for innocent people to bang up in some filthy camp. And, anyway, the military don’t do nothing for me. I’ve been with soldiers, you know.’

  I tried to smile at her but I couldn’t. Even the mention of other men in her life upsets me and she knows it. Hannah realised she’d gone too far and came over to kiss me. Then, without another word, she made me a cup of tea, which I drank in silence. It isn’t easy loving a woman in her line of business.

  Lily Lee, it was said the next morning, had left her tent in the middle of a raid at just after midnight. Dressed in red she stood in front of ‘her’ tree and began to talk. Some said she sobbed a little, too. She was seen first, before it all went mad, by a small boy called Eric. He said the Gypsy girl was saying how sorry she was to thin air, asking it to forgive her if it could.

  Of course, Eric’s mum, once she discovered that her boy was missing, got up and went to find him. What she, a worn-out mother of twelve from Silvertown, saw was Lily Lee communing with the Virgin Mary in front of her six-year-old son. Eric, his mother later told the Evening News, was ‘holding his hands up like he was praying’. That woman woke everyone else, screaming, ‘She’s come back! The Virgin Mary ain’t given up on us!’

  Mayhem followed, apparently, the still mourning Gypsies screaming, over-tired kids running all over the place, causing mischief, and East-Enders not being at all like the people who went to see Bernadette at Lourdes. Nobby Clarke told me about it the next day: ‘All they wanted to know, kept on asking, was about the war. You had geezers shouting, “Tell us when the fucking war’s gonna end!” and “Ask God to send us some fags!” Went raving mad, some of them.’

  What was missing from all the accounts of that second ‘vision’ was anything about Lily herself. She didn’t, or so it seemed, speak to ‘Our Lady’ after Eric had inadvertently blown the whistle on her. But, then, until Sergeant Williams and his lads arrived to intervene, she was a bit too busy beating off women who wanted scraps of her clothing. In the Daily Sketch the following morning, the reporter, who hadn’t been anywhere near the event, described it as ‘Outrageous. Those people who lost control of themselves should be ashamed.’ He went on to talk about how unBritish it all was and how maybe Mr Churchill would like to put a stop to it personally. But Mr Churchill, as we all know, is cleverer than most and that article got no reaction from Downing Street. After all, whatever else she might be doing, the Virgin of the Pond, as Lily’s experiences were coming to be known, was giving people hope. Because as well as the madness that attended the girl’s visions there was also contentment. I saw it for myself when I took the Duchess and Nan to the pond the following afternoon.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Oh, I think that the fact that they're singing, and hymns too, is quite delightful,’ the Duchess said, as Betty Lee led her and me towards Lily’s tent.

  Betty surveyed the massed hordes in the forest with a rather more jaundiced eye. ‘Makes you dinilo all day and all night long.’

  ‘But everyone looks so happy,’ the Duchess continued. And she wasn’t wrong. Everyone we met had a smile on his or her face. Nan said it was the grace of the Virgin entering their souls. Although how she could say that and then refuse to meet the presumed channel through which Our Lady communicated – Lily Lee – I still don’t know. The Head and all the ‘mumbo-jumbo’, as Nan called it, aside, I would have thought she’d be curious at the very least. But she wasn’t, so the Duchess and I left her sitting with another spinster she knows from church, Miss h, I think that the fact that they’re singing, and O’Dowd, and took Betty up on her offer to see Lily’s Head.

  Until this point I’d never actually spoken to Lily Lee. But as I entered the shabby, patched tent, I removed my hat and said, ‘Good afternoon,’ to the stunningly beautiful young woman sitting on the floor in front of me. With more curly black hair than you usually see on three average women, Lily Lee was also far more rounded than most Gypsy girls, who are generally skinny. But, like the first time I’d seen her, it was Lily’s eyes that held me. Large and dreamy. Very good eyes indeed for a visionary.

  ‘The undertaker,’ Lily responded matter-of-factly.

  ‘And his mother,’ Betty said to her daughter, before slipping out into the open air.

  ‘Sit down,’ the girl ordered, and indicated that the Duc
hess and I should lower ourselves on to a damp, filthy blanket on the floor.

  ‘Miss, my mother has a cold—’

  ‘The Head won’t come if you don’t sit down,’ Lily said, which, to me, had to mean that the illusion was somehow based on what angle a person viewed it from.

  ‘Oh, well,’ the Duchess said, with a smile, ‘if we must sit, we must sit. Help me down, would you, please, Francis dear?’ She took off her small black pillbox hat and reached up towards me.

  I picked her up, then lowered her down at my feet. She’s light as a feather, poor old girl. Not that Lily watched with anything that appeared to be compassion. Although lovely, her face also had a hard cast at times, like her voice, which could be as sweet as it was throaty. Once I’d settled the Duchess I sat down beside her and waited for something to happen. There wasn’t much in that tatty old tent – just a pile of rags that probably constituted Lily’s bed, a bowl for washing, animal bones and fur hanging from the ceiling and a little table surrounded on three sides by a black fabric screen.

  Lily, who was still wearing the long red dress she’d been seen in the night before, shuffled over to one side of the table, just behind the black screen, lit a small clay pipe and said, ‘The Head is very ancient and knows all things. It speaks many languages, one of which is English. You mustn’t come near or the Head will disappear, although you can ask it questions. The Head is a man of our people who was a great magician. His name is Django.’

  And then she called him. ‘Django! Django, av!’

  There was a light that I can only assume came from a tear in the top of the tent, which illuminated the surface of the table. Beyond Lily’s pipe, there was no smoke, nothing to distract a person’s attention and no sound whatsoever. So how the head of a dark, moustachioed man appeared out of thin air on that table top I couldn’t then imagine. Slowly, slowly, as if coming skin by skin into being the Head materialised and blinked its black-rimmed eyes. During this process I glanced away for the merest second so the thought about how it might have been done took my breath away.