Half a Crown (31 page)

There was nobody in the shed at the other end of the tunnel. It was drizzling. I put the coat on and came out cautiously. There were men waving electric torches around in a garden a few doors down, but nobody in front of my shed. I slipped away down the alley in the opposite direction, not running, but walking as rapidly as I dared. There were dustbins and things in the alley, and I didn’t want to bang into anything and make a clatter. At the corner where the alley intersected a cross-street I turned towards the Bermans’ street. When I came to it I glanced down it, then looked away and went on along the street I was on. There were three police cars outside the Bermans’ house and they were dragging people out in handcuffs. None of the neighbors were paying any attention. I suppose people don’t. I wouldn’t myself, normally.

I kept walking, with no idea of where I was going. It was late, I was tired, I couldn’t go to the Maynards or Uncle Carmichael or anyone I knew, because they’d find me there. Obviously Uncle Carmichael was wrong about how safe I was. I looked through the pockets of my coat as I walked and found a ten-shilling note and half a crown tucked down at the bottom underneath a big striped handkerchief. I wasn’t sure how much a room at a hotel cost, and I knew that respectable young ladies didn’t ever stay at hotels alone in any case. But I wasn’t a respectable young lady, was I? I wasn’t sure
what I was, walking alone at night through a strange part of London. I wasn’t Elvira Royston, of Arlinghurst and Switzerland and soon to be presented and then go to St. Hilda’s. I wasn’t the Cockney child I had been, but I knew what she knew. If I went to a hotel in my cheap ready-made frock and good shoes and man’s coat, they’d take me for a prostitute, like the ones I’d met in prison, and throw me out. So where did prostitutes go? There I could be safe, or at least inconspicuous.

I was glad I’d had that thought, because on the next street corner there was a policeman. This street was well lit and had traffic on it, and I could see the warm lights of a pub glowing nearby. The policeman looked at me suspiciously. I didn’t cower away as I would have before. “Got a fag?” I asked him, in my London voice, just as the streetwalker I’d met in Paddington had asked me. Prostitution was technically illegal, of course, but they could hardly arrest every whore in London. I didn’t look quite sufficiently a floozy, for one thing I had no makeup on at all, but I obviously didn’t arouse any suspicions.

“Try the George and Dragon,” he replied, bored and already moving on.

I went into the pub. I had to, he was still on the corner and might have been watching. Besides, it was brightly lit and full of people. It smelt horribly of beer, which reminded me at once of the one place I could perhaps go and be safe. People looked up as I went up to the bar, but they looked away again quite quickly. Only one man kept on looking. He was unshaven and beer-smelling, and shorter than I was. “You working, love?” he asked.

“Not tonight,” I said. “Do you know how much it would cost to get a taxi from here to Leytonstone?”

“Haven’t the faintest,” he said. He didn’t seem unfriendly. “I’d go on the tube, assuming I wanted to go, which isn’t very likely in the first place.”

“Where’s the nearest tube station?” I asked.

“Just down the street to Golders Green,” he said, jerking his thumb in the direction away from the Bermans’.

I went to the bar and bought ten du Mauriers, tipped, and a box of matches. I lit one as I went out of the pub, in case the policeman was watching, but he’d vanished in any case. I walked off in the direction the man had indicated, smoking and coughing. I came to the tube station eventually, when I was starting to think I’d missed it, because nobody could say just down the road and mean this distance. I bought a ticket to Leytonstone and as soon as the train came subsided into a seat in the corner of the carriage.

Golders Green is where the Northern Line dives underground, after running on the surface. I felt safe once we were buried, anonymous, underground, hidden. I could almost have fallen asleep. There was a very tall man sitting opposite me with an amazing carved face. He was reading the
Standard.
The headline was “Strike Spreads.” I changed trains in Tottenham Court Road, and made it without incident to Leytonstone not much after eleven. It was enough after that when I walked into the Nag’s Head, my mother told me they were closed, though people were still drinking up.

She hadn’t changed a bit. She still had the dyed red hair, over-painted face, and mutton-dressed-as-lamb look she’d had ten years before when my aunt Ciss had taken me there and persuaded her to agree to let Uncle Carmichael have me. She didn’t recognize me at all, and I could see her coming to the same conclusion as the policeman and the man in the pub in Golders Green. “Out,” she said. “It’s after closing time.”

“Mum,” I said. “It’s me, Elvira.”

She stopped still and went pale beneath her makeup. “You never,” she said. “All grown-up. I thought they was going to make you into a lady.”

“They have been,” I said. “But I’m in trouble.”

“Always the same,” she said, with a look at my waistline. “And I’m the only one you could think of who could help? Well, how far along are you?”

“Not that kind of trouble,” I said, blushing, thinking of poor Betsy.

She frowned, as if the other had been at least comprehensible. The man behind the bar raised an eyebrow and took a step towards us, and she waved him away. “Did your Auntie Ciss send you?”

“She gave me your address, so I could send a Christmas card,” I said. “But she didn’t send me.”

“You always have remembered the Christmas cards,” she said, unbending a little. “Even one from the Alps. Where’s that our Elvira’s got to now, Germany, I asked Raymond, and he looked at the stamps and said no, Switzerland.”

“That’s right, I was in finishing school there,” I said.

“So what do you want with me now?” she asked. “What sort of trouble are you in, anyway?”

“Police trouble,” I said.

“But your dad was police, and your new uncle too,” she said.

“He’s in trouble too,” I said. “I just need somewhere to hide for a couple of days, Mum. If you have a room or anything. They won’t be looking for me here.”

“What have you done?”

“Nothing,” I said, but she looked at me disbelievingly.

“What’s he done, then, your so-called uncle?”

I didn’t want to tell her he was involved with rescuing Jews. She was the one who had first told me they were dirty and ate babies. “Butted heads with another policeman,” I said. “It’ll all be sorted soon. Can I stay here?”

“Of course you can,” she said. “I was just overset for a minute, that’s all. Come on and meet Raymond.” She took my arm and I followed her to the bar. Raymond was older than my mother, but
unlike her made no attempt to disguise it. He had meaty forearms, a beer belly, and no hair at all. “Raymond, this is my little girl, my Elvira that I’ve told you about.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, putting out my hand.

“I saw the likeness as soon as she came in,” he said, taking my hand and squeezing it enthusiastically. “She’s not quite as pretty, Irene, but I can definitely see you in her.” He seemed appallingly sincere.

“Drink up now!” my mother suddenly bellowed. “Let’s have your glasses!”

“When they’re gone, we can open a bottle of champagne for the prodigal daughter,” Raymond said.

“And you can tell us all about being made into a lady,” my mother added.

I yawned.

Carmichael stood outside the Moon Under Water looking down at the Thames, which was oozing along in its usual mud-brown way, under the light evening rain, taking the echoes of streetlights and neon lights and reflecting them back as a kind of diffused glow. There was nothing on the South Bank to catch the eye, except Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s London pied-à-terre. A boat hooted mournfully somewhere out of sight. He might just as well throw himself in the river as carry on without Jack. He touched the side of his jaw. Throwing himself in the river wasn’t the sure route to death his tooth could provide. Carmichael considered suicide calmly for a moment. He could break out the tooth and die like Jack, without betraying anyone, without, or so the doctor had promised, very much pain. There’d be no chance that he’d betray the Inner Watch, or anyone. Everything could go on without him. Or he could shoot himself. He had the little pistol in his pocket.

The only reason he could find that made it worth struggling on was Elvira. If he left London immediately he could get in touch with Jacobson and have him send her to join him. He might not be able to give her Oxford, but surely there were universities in Canada or Australia? He had enough money, in untraceable securities, to pay for her education. He couldn’t imagine what he could do himself, how he
would live, but he could give Elvira that, in return for having endangered her, and thought of sacrificing her. The education was what she cared about, and he could give her that, even if it wasn’t Oxford. Besides, he was afraid to die, even if living offered nothing to go on for. He stared out across the river at the hazed jewels that marked the streets of the South Bank and loathed himself. After a while he started to walk.

The thing Carmichael and Sir Guy had both forgotten about getting out of London quickly was Ogilvie’s extra restrictions around Central London for the procession and opening of the peace conference. Carmichael remembered them just as he was about to run into one of the checkpoints. His false identity cards were good, but he was afraid of being searched with so many of them on him. Besides, he might well be recognized by any random Watchman. He was probably safe for the night, with Normanby expecting a call in the morning about exchanging Jack for Elvira, but he wasn’t sure he’d be safe trying to leave London. If he waited he could leave London on Thursday, when the extra checkpoints were gone, and take Elvira with him.

He turned away from the checkpoint and went by Underground to Victoria Station. He wandered out into the mean rundown side-streets in the Pimlico direction. The houses there had once been grand eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century mansions. Time had not been kind to them—they were shabby now and down at heel, their stucco peeling, either subdivided into lodging houses or eking out a living as rundown hotels. It was far easier to be anonymous here than in a flophouse, where he would be conspicuous because he didn’t belong. Here he could be one more failing commercial traveler, one more gray man who nobody cared about.

Although London was bulging with delegates for the conference, most of these hotels had signs reading
VACANCY.
Carmichael
knocked at a door at random. It was opened by a cheerless woman in a print pinafore. “Yes?” she asked, listlessly, pushing back a strand of pale brown hair.

“Do you have a room for a couple of nights?” Carmichael asked.

“Yes,” she said, and stood aside. He took this as an invitation and followed her inside. The hall had a smell of old kippers and cabbage, and the room she showed him was half underground and painted dark gold. He paid her for two nights in advance, and she handed him the obligatory police form to fill in. She checked it half-heartedly against his false card, looking from the picture to him. She looked again, and showed a first faint flicker of interest. “Have you been ill?” she asked.

“Yes,” Carmichael said at once. “My glands. I lost nearly a month of work, I’ll never make it up, and I don’t know how we’re going to pay the doctor’s bills.”

“My sister suffers terrible with her glands,” she said, handing back the card. “You want to drink hot milk and build yourself up.”

“That sounds like a good idea. Do you have some?”

“Me?” she asked, sounding offended, and went out, leaving the door open. “Bathroom’s down the hall, and the lav next to it, if you want it.”

If he wanted it, he thought, outraged, and then the outrage, the pleasure of having convinced her of his illness, and the desire for hot milk all disappeared into the bleakness of being alive in a world that had no Jack in it. He sank down on the bed, and sat there staring at a picture of a cross-eyed cat without seeing it. After a long time, he got up and closed the door. He took his coat off, carefully folded it up, and put it under the thin pillow. Locking the door carefully behind him, he went down the hall to use the toilet. When he came back he locked the door again, undressed, and turned out the electric light, deploring without really taking in the gold-tasseled shade. He got into bed and lay there for a while in the darkness.
Eventually, he wept, and was shaken with a storm of silent weeping. At last he fell asleep, like falling down a well.

He woke with the dawn and lay watching the piece of window at street level, far above his head, grow gray, then pink, then begin to darken periodically with the feet of early risers. He used the bathroom, running into an Indian in the hall and muttering good morning. He wondered if the man was here for the conference. India was due for Dominion status next year, if all went well. He dressed, pulled on his coat, and went out to find a cheap greasy breakfast in a corner café. The shop on Ambrose Street wouldn’t open until ten, so there was nothing he could do until then. He couldn’t call Jacobson, it was his Passover, and he’d been told never to telephone on Saturdays or holidays unless it was an emergency. This wasn’t an emergency, quite. Jack hadn’t told them anything, and Elvira should be safe enough where she was for a day or two.

The appalling breakfast (tea strong enough to go into the wrestling ring, bacon as limp as a face-flannel, fried eggs swimming in bacon fat, a burst sausage, an oozing tinned tomato, and two slices of cold toast) nevertheless did him good. It reminded him of the time when he had been an inspector for Scotland Yard and had no more to worry about than solving a case. He ached for a case to solve, a puzzle, a mystery to fit together, Sergeant Royston at his side and Jack waiting at home to hear about it when it was over.

He walked to Ambrose Street, through the early morning streets of London. He saw shops opening their blinds, and pale office workers hurrying from the Underground to work. He saw queues at bus stops disappearing into scarlet buses, which simultaneously disgorged a load of passengers who scattered onto the streets. The sun was shining and the air was clear after the rain. He saw hurrying businessmen clutching their bowler hats as a breeze came off the river. A black taxi honked its horn impatiently. In Covent Garden, where the fruit and flower market was almost over for the day, he
stood for a while and watched a juggler tossing five balls in a complicated pattern, and at last gave him half a crown when he moved on. London was all around him, the familiar, ever-changing kaleidoscope of London. And there, in the pattern, belonging, was a helmeted bobby walking his beat, in blue uniform and silver buttons.