After the Mourning

by Barbara Nadel

  The line went dead. A lot of Jocks are out-and-out puritans not at all happy about statues, pictures and relics. I could only take from this that Dr Craig had to be one of their number.

  I put the receiver back on to the cradle and said to Doris, ‘I’ll be taking the motor hearse out in a bit. Betty Lee’ll be back with us for a while.’

  Doris, whom I’d told about Lily earlier, frowned. ‘Poor lady,’ she said. ‘Just buried her other girl . . . I know some people ain’t got too much time for Gyppos, Mr H, but if you’ve got any heart you’ve got to be sorry for that woman, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘Well, we’ll all muck in to look after her,’ Doris continued. ‘Got to do your bit, ain’t you, Mr H?’

  This war has made me appreciate how lucky I am to have people like Doris around me. I’m what some would call a ‘queer fish’ and what others would say was ‘off his rocker’. But those who are close don’t care. They manage my strangeness without complaint, and the waifs and strays who cross and sometimes recross my path.

  It took several hours to get up to Whipps Cross. It’s to the north of West Ham, beyond Leyton, on the edge of the forest. Normally in a car it’s about thirty minutes away, but as usual half the roads I would normally use were closed. One reason for that is, there’s no way of knowing where damaged buildings are going to collapse: sometimes they fall into the road. But there are almost endless other reasons too – burst water mains, ruptured sewers, unexploded bombs, gas leaks. Everywhere is covered with rubble and everything stinks. I try not to sift out the various smells in my mind most of the time, but some whiffs just get to you – mainly those associated with my job. As I drove up through Stratford and into Leyton I thought about Uncle Percy and the possibility that somewhere, maybe, a bit of him was stinking to high heaven and beyond. But I didn’t think about him for long, not once I’d found myself inside the great crowd of what looked like refugees coming down Leytonstone High Road. Crestfallen and weary, these people carried or pushed in carts often huge amounts of belongings and were accompanied by what seemed like hundreds of children. I didn’t recognise anyone but, unless something particularly bad had happened up in this part of the city, something along the lines of a huge gas main rupture, I imagined they had come from the forest. Some were certainly muddy, while the sadness and lack of hope on their faces could have been put there by the ending of their religious dreams. And no one was speaking. East-Enders rabbit – we’re famous for it. Bombs drop, water goes off, lights snuff out, but we always talk – even if it’s only a load of cobblers. No, these people were dealing with more and worse than war. They were suffering from the death of their hopes.

  ‘Where’s Lily’s mother?’ I asked Dr Craig, when I eventually got to the hospital and found him in the corridor outside the mortuary. Betty Lee was usually very visible as well as audible. But only little Charlie, Lily’s younger brother, was in evidence now. He was sitting guard over a bag of Lily’s clothes, dry-eyed and silent outside the blood-smeared door to Dr Craig’s mortuary.

  The Scot shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said wearily. ‘We’ve had one of those mornings when we’ve been unable to move for the dead. We’ve taken some from down by the docks for storage, but we’re running out of space.’ He shook his head. ‘My job isn’t to provide a storehouse! Ach, the woman probably left early this morning. The boy’s been here watching the raw meat of war pass by since dawn. Do you have the hearse at the back?’

  ‘Yes.’ I looked over at Charlie, who lowered his head rather than meet my eyes.

  ‘I’ll have my porters make the corpse ready for you to take,’ Dr Craig continued. ‘If you go out to your vehicle . . .’

  ‘I need a minute to talk to Charlie first,’ I said. ‘I’d like to find out who’s coming back to the shop with me.’

  ‘If you wish.’ The doctor sniffed. ‘But whoever it is had better keep their head down on the journey back.’ He leaned in close to my ear and said, ‘You’ve seen the crowds on the roads, from the forest?’

  ‘Yes. Took me quite a while to get through.’

  ‘Well, if any of them recognises anyone in your hearse, or even the vehicle itself, you might have trouble.’

  ‘I didn’t coming here,’ I said. ‘No one took any notice of me or the car.’

  ‘Even so, the MPs are saying that some less moral types have been grabbing “souvenirs” from the Gypsy camp ever since the girl’s death was announced. Care will be needed. Imagine what they’d do to her body.’

  I tried not to. People can be beastly sometimes. If we didn’t have this side to human nature there wouldn’t be all the looting that takes place so much of the time. People wanting to make a quick quid at someone else’s expense or, as in this case, people trying to hold on to a shred of hope with a lock of hair or a piece of clothing as a good-luck charm. Yes, it’s ghoulish, but I could understand it. Lily’s ‘followers’ knew as well as I did what would happen after her death. The end of a dream – after all the reports of happy people in the forest – wasn’t going to make either the papers or the wireless. The big tragedies don’t – the direct hits involving hundreds or even thousands, the end of people’s hope. Bad for morale.

  ‘I’m going to recommend we tell people that the girl’s body is to be taken back to the Gypsy camp,’ Dr Craig continued. ‘Then the more insane among her admirers will have a fictional area to focus on. Also, the MPs will be able to mount guard on the whole camp.’

  ‘That seems sensible,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, and I’ve had Captain Mansard in here,’ Dr Craig said, as he made to leave and then stopped. ‘He won’t have it that Williams did away with the girl.’

  ‘Williams was one of his men,’ I said, as if that were explanation in itself.

  Dr Craig whispered, ‘Mansard thinks that one of the girl’s own, a Gypsy, killed her. He intends, in particular, to pursue her brother-in-law, who, I believe, has spoken of having some part in the crime.’

  ‘Edward? The only thing he did wrong was have an affair with his sister-in-law – with his dying wife’s approval. Doctor, Edward believes that the ghost of his wife killed Lily,’ I said. ‘He didn’t do it himself!’

  ‘No, Williams did. He didn’t assault her, though. In spite of appearances there was no sexual attack, but he did kill her.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  The doctor fixed me with a stern gaze. ‘The knife in his hand was the murder weapon,’ he said. ‘That is my professional opinion.’ Then he added coldly, ‘When you’ve done with the boy, come and remove the corpse. I can’t have it taking up space any longer.’

  He went back through the mortuary doors then, leaving me alone with Charlie. I sat down next to the boy and watched as a couple of porters carried a bloodstained stretcher out of the mortuary and down the corridor towards the outside of the hospital.

  ‘So where’s your mum, then, mate?’ I asked, once the pair had passed and the passage was relatively quiet.

  ‘You got a fag, have you?’ Charlie asked.

  Like a lot of the Gypsies, the lad didn’t have a clue as to his date of birth. I reckoned him to be about ten, twelve at the most. But in common with some of the other kids in the camp I’d seen him smoke alongside his elders and betters on several occasions. So I rolled him one up, then held it aloft as a sort of a bribe while I asked him again where his mum might be.

  ‘She had to go back,’ Charlie said.

  ‘To the camp?’

  ‘Yeah,’ but he turned his head away as he said it.

  I gave him the fag, which he lit, using a pungent-smelling lighter.

  ‘So you’ll come back with your sister and me to the shop?’ I continued.

  ‘She’d be frightened if I didn’t,’ the boy responded simply. ‘You know.’

  I nodded. Of course, alone among the gauje, Lily’s spirit would be in constant discomfort. Whatever she had done, including sleeping with her sister’s husband, she was still a R
omany woman and was deserving of respect for that, if nothing else.

  As if reading my thoughts, Charlie said, ‘You know that Lily and Rosie loved each other, don’t you? Lily wouldn’t never have done nothing to hurt Rosie, nothing Rosie never wanted.’

  I’d heard it more woefully, from Edward. ‘You’re saying you know about how Rosie and Lily and Edward had an arrang—’

  ‘I don’t believe she saw Rosie’s muló.’ Charlie turned his face full on to mine. ‘Don’t believe she saw no Virgin neither.’

  ‘Then what,’ I asked, ‘do you think she did see, Charlie?’

  ‘A devil,’ he answered. ‘There’s devils everywhere now and they kill Romanies and Jews, and they worship that bloke Hitler.’

  ‘Charlie,’ I asked, ‘how do you know about such things?’

  Gypsies were not often, in my experience, abreast of the news and, besides, knowledge about the hounding of the Jews and the Gypsies in Europe wasn’t known to everyone – it still isn’t believed by a lot of people even now.

  ‘I do a lot of listening,’ he said.

  ‘To who?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘What—’

  ‘You do a lot of asking questions for someone who ain’t a copper,’ Charlie said. His face, though not beautiful like those of his sisters, Rosie and Lily, was handsome in a serious way.

  His large, well-made features were more adult in character than childlike and I wondered whether Charlie was considerably older than he at first appeared. I also wondered whether he was as good at play-acting as he was at avoiding my questions. After all, so far, I’d only ever looked at Gypsy men in relation to Lily’s mysterious Head illusion.

  ‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘Lily’s Head—’

  ‘Gone. Now she’s gone, the Head’s gone.’

  ‘Yes, but I think that the Head may have been the last person to see Lily alive, apart from whoever killed her . . .’

  ‘Head don’t know nothing!’ Charlie said. ‘The Head’s magic. It don’t do with things in this world.’

  Mr Lee, his father, had said much the same.

  With the kid, however, fairly or unfairly, I decided to push it. ‘Oh, come on, Charlie,’ I said, ‘you’re a bright boy, you must know who did that illusion with your sister!’

  ‘No, you’re wrong.’ He turned away quickly.

  ‘What about the Head being a bloke made up to—’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ He stood up and began to pace the corridor in an agitated fashion.

  I stood, too, and this time I assumed a very serious air. The boy was obviously disturbed by this part of the conversation so it was up to me to convince him that what I was talking about needed saying – urgently. ‘Listen, Charlie,’ I said, ‘Captain Mansard of the Military Police has got some idea about a man of your people killing your sister. Everyone, especially your brother-in-law Edward, will need to have what is called an alibi, someone to vouch for where a person was at the time of a murder. Now, the Head must have been with Lily just before she set off into the trees to—’

  ‘I’ve told you, the Head’s gone!’ he said. ‘I won’t—’

  ‘Charlie, Gypsy men could be arrested!’ I said. I’d taken to heart what Craig had told me about Captain Mansard and his opinion of the doctor’s beliefs about Sergeant Williams’s involvement in Lily’s death. Military types like him are all the same. In the Great War you got accustomed to it. Officers rarely accept that their men are involved in crimes or acts against civilians – it damages their pride too much. Mansard, I knew, would fight hard to clear Williams and, by association, his own name too. I also knew that the truth of what had happened wouldn’t matter to him when the pride of the regiment was at stake.

  However, before I could say any more, Charlie fixed me with his winter black eyes and said, ‘That won’t happen. No one will be arrested.’

  ‘But, Charlie,’ I said, ‘you don’t know people like Captain Mansard.’

  ‘No.’ He still held my eyes with his.

  Dr Craig put his head round the door then, the noise of the squeaking hinges breaking the spell between Charlie’s eyes and mine. ‘Mr Hancock,’ he said sternly, ‘can you come now, please?’

  I apologised and made Charlie sit in the corridor while I went to collect Lily. I didn’t think it would be good for him to see her in the state I know bodies can be in after doctors have investigated a death. As it was, there wasn’t a lot to see, but I loaded the body into a shell and a couple of Craig’s men helped me carry it out to the hearse. Before I left I asked the doctor what would be happening now and he told me that that was up to the civilian police.

  ‘If the MPs don’t like it, that’s too bad,’ Dr Craig said, as I retrieved Charlie from the corridor and began to walk with him towards the exit. ‘If a man is guilty, he’s guilty. No friendship or regimental loyalty can change that.’

  Once outside, Charlie said to me, ‘They think Sergeant Williams killed our Lily, do they?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘He never,’ the boy said.

  I held the passenger door of the hearse open for him, then went to the driver’s side and got in. ‘How do you know that, Charlie?’ I asked. ‘Do you know who did kill your sister?’

  ‘No. But it weren’t Sergeant Williams.’

  I started the engine. ‘How do you know?’ I said.

  ‘I dunno.’ He shrugged. ‘Just don’t sit right.’

  I didn’t know exactly what he meant. I couldn’t know precisely what was inside Charlie’s head. But something in what he’d said made me feel uneasy, so after I’d taken the body back to the shop and settled Charlie with a plate of Nan’s scrag-end stew, I went over to Plaistow police station. I didn’t know whether the boys over there would have any information about the investigation into Lily’s death, but it was worth asking and, besides, I still had my own business to follow up on too.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘If we’d found so much as a finger you would’ve been the first to know,’ Sergeant Hill said, as he shook his head regretfully. ‘I’m sorry, Mr H, but I think your uncle Percy just disappeared. You know how it is.’

  Yes, I did. As I had always believed, Percy had vaporised, split into a million million atoms and gone back into the earth and sky whence he had come.

  ‘Your Stella still in a two and eight about her old man, is she?’

  ‘Sort of,’ I said. ‘Although it’s different now. She reckons that the “miracle” up in Epping Forest means her dad might still be alive.’

  Sergeant Hill sighed. ‘Poor old Stel,’ he said. ‘She must be disappointed about the turn of events up there.’

  ‘Yes.’ It was the perfect lead-in to what I’d really come to talk about.

  I told him how I’d been called out by the Gypsies to Lily’s body and about what was likely to happen now. I also told him that when I’d returned to the shop with Charlie Lee I had tried to explain what was happening to my cousin but without success. ‘Stella just skips about with a soppy grin on her face,’ I said. ‘Shock’s a funny thing, isn’t it? So many people are going to have problems with this forest business.’

  Although the station was quiet, which was a bit strange in itself, Sergeant Hill took my arm and led me through into one of the back offices. As he shut the door behind me he motioned me towards one of the chairs, then sat down. He offered me a Woodbine and took one for himself.

  ‘You know a lot of my fellows are up the forest, don’t you?’ he said, as he leaned in towards me. ‘There’s a lot of trouble.’

  ‘With the Gypsies?’

  He looked over one shoulder, then the other. ‘Mr H, this is very hush-hush,’ he said. ‘People ain’t supposed to know about such things.’

  ‘About what?’ I asked.

  He pulled his chair so close to me that I could almost have smoked his fag instead of my own. ‘Things bad for morale,’ Sergeant Hill whispered. ‘Since this girl died, there’s been violence up there, people wanting to know who killed he
r, people threatening to find who it was and do him in. Not the Gypsies, the bloody gauje! Walthamstow and Leyton divisions called on us for help to calm it all down! No matter what’s happened and who done what to who, the MPs have still got their job to do. We and, I’ve heard, some plainclothes from Scotland Yard have to make sure they can carry on doing it.’ He put a hand on my arm and said, ‘But this is hush-hush, remember. You can’t tell no one.’

  I understood, all right. No one with an ounce of intelligence takes at face value everything the government does or doesn’t tell us. Like a lot of people round here I can remember the official silence back in September when South Hallsville School in Canning Town bought it. A direct hit, people killed, hundreds made homeless, but it was nothing – in the national news. Here, things were different. Here we watched the victims carrying on as usual, suffering in silence for the sake of their pride as well as the sake of their country. Such events, should they get out, would destroy morale, so it’s thought, and let the Nazis into people’s heads. I’d rather know the truth myself, but I’m a madman, which means my thoughts cannot be relied upon.

  ‘What went on up in the forest was a nice little miracle with a nice little Virgin keeping, thank Christ, schtum,’ Sergeant Hill continued.

  ‘Count your blessings that Lily’s Virgin didn’t predict the end of the war or the death of Hitler or anything, eh?’

  ‘Bloody right!’ the policeman said. ‘Imagine if she’d told all them up there to go and march on Downing Street or something! Don’t bear thinking about!’ He shivered. ‘But then again, all of them up in the forest left unsatisfied don’t sit that much better. They want to know why the Virgin come to the girl and what punishment heaven or whatever is going to pour down on humanity now that Lily Lee’s gone. Don’t you go telling too many people you’ve got the girl’s body up your place, will you? They’ll all be down camped outside if you’re not too careful!’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Dr Craig up at Whipps Cross warned me about that. He’s going to recommend people are told the girl’s body is going back to the Gypsies.’