Brighton Belle

by Sara Sheridan

Mirabelle exhaled. Hearing footsteps overhead she opened the cupboard door, crept into the room and checked the grate. The journal was completely destroyed. She wondered what Lisabetta was up to but decided this was the moment to leave. She checked the desk one more time, slipped a couple of different coins into her pocket and then slid behind the curtains. Across the road Vesta had been watching. She came out from her hiding place behind the hedge and motioned Mirabelle over. The catch clicked softly, the window slid open and Mirabelle Bevan disappeared into the darkness of Second Avenue.

  21

  A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

  Waclaw Gorski couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t slept properly in weeks but usually he managed at least a couple of hours a night. Tonight he had resigned himself to forgoing even that. He had suffered from insomnia for years but it had got far worse of late. He couldn’t stop worrying, that was the problem. It was all taking longer than he had expected.

  That evening Manni had turned up later than usual and he’d come in with a self-satisfied air that had set Waclaw’s nerves on edge. He brought food, though, and four bottles of beer. Waclaw would have preferred some vodka. It sometimes helped get him off to sleep when all else failed. But they’d cracked open the beers together and Manni had stayed for a while and played cards. Waclaw knew Manni counted cards, so he avoided pontoon. Instead, they played gin rummy for over an hour, betting with the little slabs of gold that were piled up on one side of the workshop. Just for fun, of course. The gold was always returned at the end of the session.

  ‘I’ll play you for a night outside,’ he offered. ‘I could go on the town, you know. A fancy restaurant and a cabaret. You could take me.’

  Manni laughed. ‘You know she won’t ’ave it, Waclaw. You can’t leave until it’s all done, you poor sod.’

  Waclaw shrugged and lit a cigarette. ‘No one must know I am here,’ he said blankly. ‘No one must know what I am doing. Or there will be no passports.’

  Waclaw hadn’t left the place for over six months. The cabin was built of pale stone on three sides with a tin roof fanning out from the huge chimney and a sheet of wooden facing on the front. The furnace kept the place permanently hot, often unbearably so, and when he was working he opened the door wide even though Lisabetta had warned him about it several times. It was too hot not to. He never thought he would but lately Waclaw had begun to miss the Polish winter – he fantasised about the biting chill of the air in Warsaw in January. He longed to see his breath appear before him and rub his pink fingers to keep them warm on the Nowogrodzka as he came out of the little café where he used to have a strong black coffee and a shot of vodka. Ah, Warsaw! It had been a long time. How much of the city was still standing, of course, he couldn’t be sure. But whether it was bomb damaged or not, Waclaw missed its ice and snow. It made him feel alive as he walked home along the river. When all this was over he was going somewhere that had snow all winter. Not, he thought with a tinge of sadness, back to Warsaw, of course. He had long realised that he couldn’t go back to his native country now the Soviets were in power, but perhaps Canada, Scotland or, if they’d have him, Sweden. There were several possibilities, he was sure of it. Waclaw had stayed alive this long because he was useful and his skills extended beyond wartime. Somewhere would have him. Somewhere that was nice and cold.

  The weather and the temperature of his surroundings were the least of the poor man’s worries but they were easier for him to focus on than the difficulties that were really on his mind. He missed Marianne and their sons Udi and Mikhail, but he didn’t dwell on them these days if he could help it, otherwise he’d never sleep at all. Lisabetta had got him out, and she’d get them out, too, when the job was done.

  The job, naturally, had grown. Waclaw didn’t wonder about where all the gold with the Nazi insignia came from, or whom he was really working for. Instead he concentrated on the minutiae – the practicalities of getting everything absolutely right.

  ‘I can just recast these as unmarked gold bars,’ he’d offered when she’d shown him what he’d be working with. He knew full well that wasn’t quite what Lisabetta had in mind but he’d hoped the speed at which he could work for that kind of turnaround might make the proposition attractive. She had listened to what he had to say and then dismissed the idea quickly. Coins might take longer to make but they were, in effect, worth more than the gold they were made of and prompted far fewer questions about the vendor. Gentlemen collected coins. Fleeing Nazi war criminals, tinpot dictators and criminals of various persuasions had gold bars.

  So they had started, and from the outset she had been determined to make the very most of the gold. At the beginning she’d had him gilding five-shilling pieces – that old game. He’d set up a tank of acid laced with granules of gold and sent a current through it. The silver coins had gilded easily and the results had looked exactly like five-pound gold pieces. But the weight had been wrong. He’d told Lisabetta that up front but she hadn’t understood the significance of the scale. She was going to be left with thousands upon thousands of five-pound pieces that no professional would ever convert to cash. There were only so many gullible punters to sell them to. Lisabetta had taken the whole of the first consignment – a gross of them – up to London and had Bert Jennings flog them in Notting Hill, Ladbroke Grove and Kilburn, door to door, one by one. It had taken over a month.

  It had quickly become apparent that as the gold was hardly in short supply it would be far more effective simply to mint solid gold coins. It meant less profit but there would be no problem in selling the coins later. With Waclaw’s undeniable talents in play, the fake currency was indistinguishable from the real thing.

  He had flung himself into the job. The first load of sovereigns had been a huge success but then Lisabetta had decided that she didn’t want to flood the market and insisted he branch out. Waclaw researched the exact measurements of individual coins and painstakingly made stamps to use on the blanks he cast in batches of twenty-four. He never minted the very rare years, or the most prolific. The first forty-eight attempts, Lisabetta and Eric Crichton had sold to antique dealers around Brighton. Not one of them had noticed a thing. Why should they? The coins were solid gold and Waclaw was a master goldsmith making exact copies. They might not be produced by the Royal Mint but that was the only difference from the genuine article. Lisabetta had tested and tried – she had sold one of Waclaw’s fakes and a genuine coin, together, in half a dozen batches. Even side by side not one dealer had questioned the authenticity of what they were presented with. That was that – the coins were indistinguishable from the real McCoy.

  Larger-scale production had started immediately. The little blocks with the Nazi markings on them had disappeared from the stack against the wall of the foundry. He had worked very hard but the supplies of gold were replenished several times. It was coming to the end now – Lisabetta had assured him it wouldn’t be much longer. This was the very last batch.

  Last week Lisabetta had come to the foundry. She had perhaps realised that his patience was wearing thin and turning into a kind of vicious desperation. She’d told him that Marianne and the boys were in Berlin.

  ‘I almost have the papers organised,’ she said. ‘Your family is safe and we can get them out in a month or two. We’ll bring them here, Waclaw. All you have to do is finish the job.’

  ‘The job we agreed on was finished over three months ago,’ he murmured.

  Lisabetta crossed her legs daintily and held out an envelope. A letter. He tore it open with shaking fingers. It was Marianne’s writing – the familiar tiny circle over the ‘i’ and the way she crossed her ‘t’. She was in Berlin, all right, in a flat just off Unter den Linden. They were fine. Thank God, they were fine. ‘We are very hopeful,’ she had written. ‘I can’t wait to be together again. The boys have picked up some German and we are being well cared for. We miss you though.’

  ‘Now,’ said Lisabetta, ‘we are almost there, I think.’

  He hadn’t wanted to
break down in front of her. But he had. ‘Can’t you bring them now?’ he sobbed. ‘Please.’

  Lisabetta looked sad for a moment. ‘The papers aren’t ready yet. It’s not easy. But we’ll get them here. Probably through Amsterdam. It’s dangerous. Berlin. Difficult. It’s not like bringing people out of cities in the west of the country. Berlin is so far in, well, it’s surrounded. I’m working on it, Waclaw, really I am, but there’s only one shot at these things. If they come up on the Russians’ radar ...’ She let the sentence linger in the hot air. ‘I like these five-pound gold pieces. They aren’t so obvious somehow as the guineas.’

  Waclaw wanted to scream. The coins were perfect. They all were. He even aged them slightly. Victorian guineas hadn’t been freshly minted for over fifty years, after all. He was doing a very exacting job. Each coin, though he said it himself, was a masterpiece. The two-pound coins were especially good. ‘I’m doing my very best.’

  ‘And it’s wonderful, your best,’ Lisabetta assured him. ‘Now, don’t worry, Waclaw. You’re a master goldsmith and a good one. That’s your talent. My talent, well, I’m good at getting people out of Europe. It’s a fair swap – one set of skills for another.’

  Waclaw knew she’d already had her money’s worth but he didn’t say so.

  ‘Just bring them to me as soon as you can.’ He smeared his tears across his face. He didn’t want to let himself think that he couldn’t trust Lisabetta. He didn’t want to dwell on the kind of woman she clearly was. She was his only hope. Why wouldn’t she do what she said? He’d been damn useful to her after all. When he worried too much, when it became unbearable, he just told himself that it would be easier for her to simply do what she’d agreed. That she might need him again. That it was nothing to her and he’d done so much. Marianne would be here later in the summer. His boys were on their way, perhaps, even now.

  The night of the Brighton races, when Manni left the foundry, it was after one. He was tired, he said. It had been a long day and after the day’s business he had paperwork to do – bets to write up. Now he just wanted to sleep. Waclaw lit a cigarette and stood in the doorway as Manni’s figure disappeared into the still black night. The moon was tiny and the sky was very dark. Waclaw wasn’t sure exactly where he was in England but he suspected he was close to the sea. There were gulls most mornings, perched on the roof. It must be warm up there. Now, in the silence, he could swear he heard a rush of waves but perhaps it was only his imagination. He threw the cigarette onto the waste ground and sighed. He’d work if he could but the foundry was noisy to operate so he kept to respectable office hours. There were houses not very far away and they’d complained before – it had been touch and go at the beginning.

  Pushing the boundaries of what had become a very small world, Waclaw took two steps away from the building and lay down on the dry earth, looking up at the sky. As his eyes became accustomed to the light he thought he could pick out some of the stars. The distinctive slant of Orion’s belt. He sighed and followed the line of sight to the Pole Star. It was so dark and so quiet, Waclaw wondered if perhaps he should sleep outside tonight. The air was crisp and that was a relief. It had been a mild winter and now spring had arrived. Marianne and the boys were under the same sky. In Berlin the stars would look slightly different, of course, but they’d still be visible. He liked Berlin – he’d been there often before the war when he’d worked for Deutsche Bank and once or twice when he’d done specific jobs for wealthy clients. He remembered being in the Tiergarten and having champagne with an old Jewish man who was delighted to have an ancient Egyptian gold ring conserved. ‘Such talent. Such wonderful craftsmanship,’ the man had congratulated him. That old man was probably dead now, he thought sadly. I wonder what happened to his ring?

  Then, suddenly, as he daydreamed Waclaw heard a curious sound in the darkness off to his right. He sat up. There it was again. Almost like an animal but he knew there were only a couple of pet dogs nearby – sheepdogs, which sometimes barked. This sounded too deep. It repeated again. It was heavy breathing. Damn it, it was snoring! He sat listening for another moment or two. Whatever it was, it was very close. He squinted into the darkness, made the decision and set off towards one of the old stone outhouses. He hadn’t been out of the foundry for weeks. It had affected him, he realised. He was nervous – nervous even walking a few yards! What was this doing to him? He had been a soldier, for heaven’s sake, and here he was, heart fluttering at the thought of a walk across a bit of wasteland towards some strange sleeping creature.

  The door was locked from the outside with a long rusting bolt. Waclaw drew it back and peered inside the dark shed. The snoring stopped suddenly.

  ‘Hello,’ he ventured. He made a clicking sound that he hoped seemed friendly, in case it was an animal inside. ‘Are you in there?’

  There was a muffled sound – someone trying to speak.

  Waclaw went inside. It was so dark that he careered straight into the man, who was tied to a chair.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He bent down and felt his way. The man was gagged. He pulled away the dirty strip of cloth. ‘Are you all right? What has happened?”

  ‘My name is Father Sandor,’ said a deep voice.

  ‘You’re a priest?’

  ‘Yes. Please, will you untie me?’

  The man had soiled himself. It was clear he must have been there for a while. As Waclaw struggled with the rope, he questioned what he was doing. But he wasn’t prepared to walk away. Leaving someone tied up like this would be wrong. Waclaw had seen a lot of suffering – enough to last a lifetime. The hut stank and it was a smell he had sworn he’d never have to live with again – the stench of piss and crap and unwashed fear.

  ‘Come with me,’ he said gently. ‘It’s not far and I can help you clean up.’

  The priest couldn’t walk on his own.

  ‘Did they feed you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Put your arm around me.’

  They stumbled across the waste ground towards the foundry. As they neared the yellow light of the fire and the gas lamps, Waclaw saw that the man was middle-aged. His lips were flaking and dry, and when he reached out his hands to warm them by the fire, his pink fingers shook. He was wearing priest’s robes all right, smeared in mud and worse.

  ‘How long were you in there?’ Waclaw asked.

  Sandor sank to the ground. ‘Two days.’

  Waclaw handed him a tin cup of water and went to fetch some clothes as the priest gulped it down gratefully. The outhouse had been used for a while to store supplies but as the job progressed they needed less storage space. Now, it seemed, Manni was using it as a prison. What had this man done? A priest!

  ‘Do you know why they’re holding you?’ Waclaw asked.

  Sandor studied his rescuer. He licked his lips. ‘Yes, I know that they murdered a man. I know where the body is. Why are you here?’

  Waclaw gestured towards the tools of his trade. ‘I work here.’

  Sandor’s blue eyes softened in understanding. ‘They have you? My son,’ he said in sympathy.

  The words stung. Instead of finding a tin of soup for the priest and warming it on the fire, as he had intended, the goldsmith’s eyes narrowed in anger. Kindness was too painful. It had been a long time since he had had to endure it. Waclaw picked up one of the pokers he used to stoke the flames and drew it like a sword. What business was it of this old man? The tone of Sandor’s voice physically hurt. Waclaw couldn’t bear it.

  ‘I’ll burn your clothes,’ he said, ‘and let you go free. But don’t start with all that.’ No one really cared. No one.

  ‘How long since you slept?’ Sandor reached out his hands, palms upwards.

  Damn him, was it that obvious? Waclaw brought down the poker hard and left a dent in the dirt floor. It did not deter the priest.

  ‘I can pray for you, my son,’ Sandor said, ‘but if you like, I’ll take you with me.’

  ‘Get changed, old man.’

  The priest did as he
was asked, struggling to his feet, loosening his dog collar and throwing it on the fire. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and Waclaw drew in his breath. On the man’s chest there were horrible scars, a tangle of thin white lines criss-crossing the skin above deeper mauve slashes where he had been badly cut and the skin hadn’t healed cleanly. Sandor met his eyes but didn’t say anything about the injuries. He just kept trying to reach out to Waclaw. The man looked like a burnt-out shell. There might be no apparent scars on his body but Sandor could see that he was wrecked, cut to pieces inside.

  ‘You know they probably intend to kill you. How can they let you live with whatever it is you know? The woman has no emotions, no morals, no decency that I can detect, and I have some skill at finding the good in people. What is your name, my son?’

  Waclaw hesitated. ‘Did they do that to you here?’

  Sandor shook his head. ‘No. That was a long time ago. Another lifetime. And I didn’t tell them anything. I shall tell you, though, if you like ... if you tell me your name.’

  ‘Waclaw,’ he relented.

  ‘Waclaw. Polish?’

  The goldsmith nodded.

  ‘Fine work the Polish army did for the Allies. You should be proud. I am Hungarian, of course, but I worked for the British Secret Service in the war. And they are here now, in Brighton. They will help you, Waclaw.’

  The goldsmith laid down the poker. ‘She has my wife, Marianne and our boys. In Berlin. She is finding them passports and papers. She is bringing them here.’

  ‘You believe that?’ Sandor asked.

  The question hung in the hot air and Waclaw did not answer.

  Sandor continued. ‘The Allies are strong in Berlin. Help us and I am sure they will help you. The British are honourable. How long has that woman had you here? Has she given you anything for all your hard work and loyalty?’

  Waclaw hesitated. He was so close to completing what he’d started. So close to the passports and the escape route. And yet he knew what the priest said about Lisabetta was absolutely true. It was far easier for her just to kill him once the last coin was minted. Of course it was. He had no leverage – no way to make her do what she had promised. And then what would happen to his family?