Trouble In Paradise

by Pip Granger

  We chatted about the morning service, then the weather. We had just got on to the continuing shortages, when the drinks arrived, along with a small glass of milk for Tony. Finally, the door closed once again behind Mrs Cattermole’s broad backside and Vi got straight to the point; the agony had been prolonged long enough.

  ‘Tony’s got something to tell you, Vicar.’ She nodded to her son, who stood, his head bowed down so meekly that I’d have sworn he was taking the mickey, if it hadn’t been for the knuckles of his tightly clasped hands gleaming white and sharp in the gloom.

  It took a while, but at last Tony came to the end of his long and sorry tale. The Vicar had listened hard, kept his gaze on Tony and hadn’t interrupted once, although Vi and I did, several times. Finally, when we’d all dried up, the Vicar said, ‘I see,’ in a thoughtful kind of a way. ‘It must have been a very difficult thing for you to do, to own up as you have done, Tony, very difficult indeed. One must give credit where it is due; it took some considerable bravery, dear boy. You’re a good chap at heart, I’ve always said so.

  ‘Now, our three most pressing problems, as I see it’ – it was such a relief to hear the ‘our’ in those words, as it meant the good Vicar was on Tony’s side, and he could certainly do with him – ‘are first, to disarm that poor, misguided youth before he hurts someone, or himself. Secondly, we must secure the church silver until the threat to it is past. And last, but by no means least, we must ensure that Tony comes to no harm. It’s a thorny thicket, there’s no doubt about that, and we must think hard before we act – but act we must. The situation cannot be left as it is.’ These were the family’s thoughts entirely, to a woman, but not necessarily in that order or in quite those words.

  ‘I think we can tell Lily L— er, the police about Brian being armed,’ I suggested. ‘He’ll have shown his gun to so many people, anyone could’ve blabbed, it needn’t be our Tony. ’Specially if we make sure the law doesn’t associate Tony with the telling.’

  I’d been thinking it through all day. There was no doubt in my mind that Tony wasn’t the only boy Brian had shown off to, so if it was handled right, he might never suspect Tony of grassing, or at least never know for sure – which just might keep Tony out of the hospital. It didn’t do to get a reputation as a grass around our way, unless of course you were a man of the cloth; then you’d probably get away with it, as long as you heard it as something you might call gossip and not a sacred confession. People expected that sort of righteousness from the clergy and didn’t need to punish it, forgive it or overlook it. But if I ran to the law, it would be a very different matter.

  As it happened, Reverend Cattermole was way ahead of me. ‘That’s not difficult, Zelda,’ he assured me. ‘I’ll simply say that I have heard about the weapons from reliable sources that I am unwilling to name. I may not be a Catholic priest, but I do believe that George Grubb and, more importantly, his superiors, will respect the dog collar and allow me to have my way in this matter. It won’t be the first time that I have felt it my duty to help the police with their inquiries, while protecting my sources. In the end, it works well for all parties concerned. Nobody will want to upset the status quo on this occasion. If I were a betting man, I’d place a modest wager on it.’

  It was a massive relief. It got Vi, Tony and me off of that particular hook at least. That left protecting Tony and the silver; and the Vicar, bless him, had an answer for those knotty problems too.

  ‘As to the silver, we’ll pop it into the bank’s safe until we’re sure it’s, er, safe. I’m sure the manager will oblige. He’s a sound fellow, worships with us. And young Tony here; well, he did offer to help with repairs to the vicarage and the church in return for piano lessons. Perhaps it would facilitate matters if he stayed with us here at the vicarage for a while. Nobody will think to root him out in the dead of night and I doubt he’ll have dubious callers even when they find out where he is. Which, of course, will be impossible to keep quiet after a few days, possibly a week or so if we’re careful. You know how news travels. But at least there is a plausible reason for it. Even if Brian himself has his doubts, the rest of the neighbourhood will be happy enough. There is, after all, plenty of work to be done and you, young man, have much atoning to do.’

  I could tell from his face that Tony didn’t fancy the idea much, but then he probably didn’t know what ‘atoning’ was. Vi and I did, though, and we agreed with the man wholeheartedly. It would also give Tony a place of safety, at least for a while, so the Vicar’s idea was carried by a majority vote. We almost skipped home, the relief of having warned the Vicar was so great. The only thing we had to worry about now was how to keep Tony out of the hands of the law and well away from Borstal. That, and the rest of life’s little wrinkles, of course.

  That night, towards dawn, I had one of my dreams. All I can remember was a noose swinging gently in a dream breeze. I couldn’t work out who it was for – Chester, Tony or Brian. I don’t think it was a premonition, though. It was just that there’d simply been too much talk of hanging. At least, I hoped so.

  35

  What with one thing and another, I took a while to notice that Mrs Dunmore was in a filthy mood on the Monday morning. She hardly penetrated at all at first. Cook and Beryl were fed up, I could see that, but I just kept my head down, got on with the work and worried instead about Tony, not to mention Dilly and Chester, Zinnia’s problems and, last but by no means least, Charlie. All my nearest and dearest seemed to be up to their eyebrows in it, and so was I; it seemed reasonable that Mrs Dunmore came last in that particular field of runners, as far as I was concerned. Let her grumble, moan and find fault, I had other things on my mind. Life had seemed so much simpler, somehow, when all we had to worry about was survival; praying we’d dodge the next bomb, find a shilling for the gas and make a meal for two out of a minute lump of grey, unidentifiable fish, half a teaspoon of elderly Bisto and a dribble of Camp Coffee.

  Mrs Dunmore worked up a minor frenzy over the state of the gas oven, and I switched jobs from scrubbing tables to scrubbing cookers. All the while, I tried to reason myself out of my anxieties. Tony would either get out of trouble or not; only time would tell. The situation wasn’t likely to sort itself on a Monday morning while I was slaving away, fighting grease armed only with a rag, scrubbing brush, soda and tepid water. So I should shove it to the back of my mind until I was in a position to do something – anything.

  The same went for Dilly and Chester. Either they’d worked something out or they hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to find out about it while I was on my knees with my head in the oven. I would find out what had happened between them that night after work, and not a second before. I’d invited Dilly to my place for tea and I’d deliberately not asked Chester, so that we could have a proper chat between friends.

  It was possible that she’d bring him anyway, love being what it is and parting being so painful, even for a few hours, but I hoped not. Men are a distraction when women want to talk. They always seem to want a cup of tea, a sandwich or to give us the benefit of their opinions. Either that, or the women are distracted, feeling it necessary to flirt if the men are single, even when they don’t particularly fancy them.

  So when Terry and Ronnie had angled to be invited as well, I was downright rude: ‘Not on your nellies, gents. If she does bring Chester along, which I doubt, I want to get a good look at him without you two puffing your chests out and showing off. You blokes can’t help it when there’s a Yank about. And if he doesn’t come, I want Dilly to myself, so that I get the inside story – which I won’t get with you breathing down her neck, and demanding cups of tea while you’re at it.’ I brooked no argument. All their wheedling on the tube ride home from the dance had cut no ice with me.

  The strange goings-on around Zinnia seemed to have come to an abrupt halt. The attacks had come out of nowhere and disappeared in the same direction. Of course, it was too early to breathe easy, but the fact remained, there had been nothing sinister for some days.
Her cats seemed to be on the mend. Hepzibah was back to her normal sleek and glossy, tabby self, and Hallelujah had survived his stint in the oven. In fact, the warmth and quiet had brought him round a treat, as Zinnia had predicted. Although he limped very slightly, his wound was healing nicely. Zinnia reckoned the limp would go eventually.

  Zinnia herself gave me more to worry about. She was unusually quiet and reflective and she’d made one or two mysterious journeys that she wouldn’t discuss beyond saying that she was ‘making provision for my future, hen’. Which alarmed me a bit, because I always thought her future would be pretty much like her present and her past thirty years; in other words, living and working in and around Paradise Gardens. But she wouldn’t be drawn, just kept saying that when the time was right and some decisions had been made, she’d let me know what she planned. Zinnia was harder to crack than a Bank of Scotland vault, so I had to be content to wait and see.

  That left Charlie. Once again, there was nothing to be done there and then but to carry on. I was trying to save some of my meagre wages, but it wasn’t easy, what with my contribution to Tony’s lessons every week and the fares to and from Soho to fork out. I often blew a few bob at the cafe as well, which wouldn’t have been necessary if I’d taken sandwiches. But I enjoyed my trips to the cafe – they were my treat for the week – so my savings usually suffered. A few pennies would go in, only to come out again almost immediately. I suppose it would have helped if I knew what I was trying to save up for, but I didn’t know; I just had the feeling it would be a good idea, ‘against the day’. Against what day, I was blowed if I knew.

  It was all so frustrating. I was stuck. I couldn’t act. All I could do was fret and mark time by scrubbing the bloody gas cooker with Mrs Dunmore’s shrill voice nagging annoyingly in the background. I hated ‘waiting and seeing’ more than almost anything. I was a doer, not a waiter, and I was in the starting block, ready to dash off in four different directions at least. On and on I scrubbed. When Mrs Dunmore finally left the room, Cook and Beryl started to grumble. Come the end of the day, it was all I could do not to scream.

  I broke the land speed record getting ready to get off work that night, and was just at the door when Mrs Dunmore asked, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Home,’ I said shortly, as if it was any of her business.

  She took me by the elbow, led me away from the back door and blessed freedom and into the doorway of her office. She pointed at her desk. When I looked baffled, she said, ‘Those crocks need clearing, washing up and putting away.’

  Something snapped. I almost heard the ‘ping’ in my head, like knicker elastic giving way under too much stretching. ‘Then clear them, wash them and put them away, you lazy, useless, good-for-nothing cow,’ I said in ever such a reasonable voice. ‘Me, I’m going home.’ And I went, leaving her with her mouth open in disbelief.

  I raced home that night, fuelled by fury, fear of what might happen to me at work the next day and an aching need to find out what had happened with Dilly and how Tony was doing. Dilly was on the doorstep as I panted to a stop, fumbled with my keys and explained why I was late.

  ‘You never!’ Dilly gasped as I finished my tale of woe.

  ‘I did!’ I answered, half defiant, half terrified.

  ‘What’ll you do if she gives you the order of the boot and with no references?’ she asked, eyes wide.

  It was an awful thought that I had been trying hard not to think all the way home. ‘I dunno,’ I admitted. ‘I thought I’d cross that bridge when I got to it – or p’raps I could borrow some wellies,’ I added hopefully. ‘Let’s not dwell, Dill. It’ll do no good. I just have to wait and see, I suppose.

  ‘Now tell me,’ I begged as I put the kettle on, ‘what happened with you and Chester?’

  ‘Well,’ she blushed, ‘we got to Terry’s and I made a cup of tea …’

  ‘Dilly!’ I yelled. ‘Spare me the boring details. Move straight to the sordid ones.’

  Dilly’s blush deepened to beetroot and she laughed, slightly hysterically. ‘I’ll tell it in my own way, Zelda,’ she huffed, ‘or not at all.’

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. ‘All right, if you must. The boring details, if you please.’

  She was all dreamy. ‘It’s not boring to me. It felt like being married. He’s got a nice place, Terry has, cosy.’ It seemed that they kicked off by getting Chester’s uniform washed, dried and ironed, if you can believe it. I was staggered. Couldn’t they think of anything better to do? Naturally, they didn’t get the whole process done at once. Dilly washed his shirt and trousers and Chester made do with Terry’s dressing gown while they waited for them to dry, and they talked while they waited. They’d talked for ages apparently, about how they felt about each other, which seemed remarkable to me. After all, when you boiled it all down, he felt ‘crazy’ about her and couldn’t get her out of his mind. And Dilly was ‘mad’ about him and couldn’t get him out of her mind, either. So why it took ‘ages’ was a mystery.

  After a while I headed her off at the pass. The mushy stuff was making me feel embarrassed for some reason, and I wanted to get on to the really important bits. ‘Yes, yes, but what did he say about marriage, him being sent home now the war is over and all that?’ I asked. ‘Were Terry and Ronnie right about how it is with him being coloured and you being a white woman?’

  She didn’t answer me for a long time, and her pretty blushes paled to a strained sort of colourlessness. ‘I think it’s worse, from what Chester says,’ she answered at last, very softly. Tears welled up until they overflowed and dripped steadily down her cheeks, unchecked. I handed her a hanky from my handbag and waited while she mopped up, followed by a hefty and very unladylike nose-blow. At last she stopped crying, took a deep breath and carried on in a very small voice. ‘I asked him what those GIs meant when they said he’d be swinging from a tree if he was at home and, oh Zeld …!’ She choked up again and all I could do was pat her hand and wait. ‘He said that in the Southern states of America Negroes are sometimes lynched for walking out with white women. Worse, a woman only has to accuse him of trying it on, even if it’s not true, and he’d be a goner. No trial, nothing.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ I whispered, awed by the enormity of it. Of course we hanged people for murder in England, but it was different, they had to be proved guilty and anyway, they’d killed someone themselves. I still wasn’t sure about hanging though, guilty or not. Mistakes were too easy to make and the wrong person could get their neck stretched. Once it’d been stretched, there was no shrinking it back again and saying, ‘Oops! Sorry, mate, our mistake,’ now was there? Dad said that the courts didn’t make those sorts of mistakes, but personally, I wasn’t so sure.

  What’s more, I could imagine all sorts of situations where a person could murder someone almost by accident, in the heat of an argument, say, when both parties were off their trollies and not thinking straight. I could imagine taking a carving knife to Charlie, if he had me cornered and I was afraid enough. It didn’t mean that I’d want him dead, but I could imagine doing it in a frenzy of fear.

  The thought of people simply deciding a bloke had to be hanged, slinging a rope over a tree and hanging him, was too awful to think about without feeling sick. But we were having to think about it, especially poor old Dilly. I mean, how would she feel if Chester swung for her, for no better reason than they were walking out together?

  ‘So,’ I whispered – I don’t know why, we were on our own – ‘what have you and him decided?’

  I didn’t think she was going to answer but eventually she did. ‘We haven’t decided. We’re both thinking about things.’ Her chin came up and she looked defiant. ‘We know we love each other and would like to get married. But we can’t do that and stay in his home town, the neighbours would never stand for it and his family would suffer too.’ I hadn’t heard her sound so sad since we heard her brother was missing.

  ‘Have you thought about living here, instead of over there?’ I as
ked.

  ‘We’ve talked about it.’ This was all she said, and I gathered that Chester didn’t fancy it much. Couldn’t say I blamed him, England was so poor! Still, we didn’t have lynch mobs. Well, none I’d ever heard of.

  ‘Where does Chester come from, anyway?’ I asked, suddenly realizing that I had forgotten. When places’ names mean nothing to me, they don’t stick in my mind, unless they’re funny of course, like Timbuktu, or exotic, like Zanzibar.

  ‘Memphis, which is a city in the state of Tennessee,’ she answered as if she’d memorized it, which she probably had.

  I shook my head. ‘It means nothing to me,’ I said, ‘but then I don’t suppose Aylesbury, Bucks, means much to most Americans neither. They’d probably think it had something to do with money and ask what the exchange rate was.’

  ‘Well, it’s not in what he calls the “Deep South”, but it’s south enough for us to have a lot of trouble if we tried to live there.’ Dilly paused. ‘They might even kill him for it.’

  ‘God!’ I exclaimed. ‘What would they do to you?’

  ‘Chester says they wouldn’t kill me, on account that I’m white and that would be murder, but they’d make my life “a living hell”, was the way he put it. But it’d be hell anyway, if someone lynched my husband, I’d’ve thought.’

  I would have thought so too, even if that husband was Charlie – and that was saying something. I wouldn’t want the bugger to swing, even though I could cheerfully give him away with a packet of tea. ‘So what’re you going to do?’ I asked. I didn’t really expect a reply, but I didn’t know what else to say. Their situation was right outside my experience, but it did seem to me that if they married and moved to America, Dilly could find herself a widow in very short order. So, they were left with two choices: give it up, or marry and stay in England. I said as much.