Last Rights (31 page)

‘But y-your mother . . .’ Just very briefly the stuttering had stopped. Now it was back again. Terror, of that madness outside
and the threat from what I was coming to see was an unpredictable armed woman inside, was beginning to overwhelm me.

‘Mother wanted him dead, which is what I did. I obeyed,’ Opal said. ‘I gave her what she wanted. I continue to give her what
she wants to this day. I owe her that.’

And then she looked up slowly at the two other women in the room, her sisters, and she smiled. ‘We’re nearly all here now.
All except Pearl. But my father will fix that. It isn’t beyond repair, you know.’

I saw that Sister Teresa was about to say something but then she appeared to change her mind and sat back, tense.

‘Have you worked it all out for yourself, Mr Hancock?’ Opal Reynolds said, as she lifted the pistol and pointed it at my head.

Inside my brain everything rattled and throbbed and I felt my feet slip anxiously against the carpet as if they wanted to
be on the move. Between all those feelings and a mouth as dry and dumb as a corpse’s I could only take things in. I was beyond
reacting now.

‘I got us all back together again, Mr Hancock,’ she said,
with another of her smiles, ‘the Reynolds sisters, just as my mother wanted. Here in our old home, which my father recommended
my adoptive parents buy for me. A nice little flat in London. Every girl should have one, you know.’ And then, moving the
pistol still closer to my head, she said, ‘Miss Green is such a respectable woman, isn’t she? Not even that dreadful old bitch
Pia downstairs has made the connection between her and Opal. Miss Green wouldn’t even think about trying to pull on Pia’s
son’s cock, would she? Only nasty, spoiled little Opal would think of doing something like that.’

When everything disappeared I must’ve thought, inasmuch as I could think, that I’d either died or completely lost my reason.
But I don’t remember anything much except that in a sense, I suppose, I entered a kind of hell for a while. Even now I’ve
only impressions of what might have happened in the hours that followed. There were voices – not loud or unpleasant – urgent
and, against all the thuds and bangs from outside, like a sort of soup of sound that swam sickeningly in my head. In fact,
if I wasn’t sick, then I certainly felt as if I might be in that room of black and yellow where everything was diluted, bleeding
into my brain. ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ was all that kept on going inside my head. ‘It is really a hell of a long way
to Tipperary.’

‘H
e didn’t know you. You should never have let him in,’ Blatt said.

His face, which was less than a foot from mine, appeared larger than I had remembered it.

‘You’ve got to get him out of here!’ The voice came from underneath my head, from the throat of the nun. ‘You’ve got to stop
this.’

I was lying, most strangely, across Sister Teresa’s chest. Half propped up, my eyes attempting to focus on first Blatt and
then the really very pretty Opal.

‘Oh, Amber, don’t be such a silly!’ the latter said. ‘My dear old dad won’t do anything to stop me getting what I want.’

‘Mr Blatt,’ the nun began, only to be curtailed by the rough voice of her older sister.

‘Don’t!’ Ruby Reynolds said. ‘Whatever’s on your mind, just keep it!’

Something muttered between Blatt and Opal passed me by, except that at the end of whatever it was
he said, ‘Well, he’ll have to go now anyway.’

‘Yes,’ Opal said. ‘If he’s got this far, he has to. That was my intention at least.’

‘What do you mean?’ I heard myself say. ‘What are you saying?’

Now able to focus more or less normally I saw both Blatt and Opal in front of me. The solicitor turned. ‘It’s safe now, old
chap,’ he said. ‘We can take you home soon.’

Underneath my head I felt the nun’s heart beat faster. ‘The all-clear . . .’ Well, of course it must have gone. If it hadn’t
I wouldn’t have been able to speak. Or would I? Nothing was certain in this place. But, then, if the all-clear had gone, Hannah
could be leaving the station . . . I needed to get back to her – she’d be worried. I made as if to get up, but strong hands
pushed me back into the nun’s lap.

‘You wait until we’re ready, Mr Hancock,’ Ruby Reynolds said. ‘Don’t you say nothing else now. You passed out, probably had
all sorts of silly dreams, you did. Just let us take you home.’

‘I know the East End quite well now,’ Opal said, with a laugh in her voice. ‘I can find the places you all go to down there
with my eyes shut.’

For just a second I saw a glance of fear whizz, almost like a quickly passed Lucifer in the trenches, from Blatt to Ruby to
Sister Teresa.

I’d be lying if I said I’d never been so frightened in my life. Of course I had. What I’d never felt before was in the middle
of something so unknown. I’d passed out and done God knows what besides, but at this point I remembered
that Opal had said she’d killed Neilson. It was fantastic to me that a child should do such a thing, but that was what she
had said. There was more too – although I wasn’t to understand all about that for a bit.

I saw Ruby go to leave the room, only to be stopped by Blatt. ‘Just get your coat,’ he said. ‘We need to get this fellow home
before his family start to worry.’

Ruby picked up her coat and hat from the back of a chair and put them on. I watched intently as she secured the feathered
hat to her thick black wig with a pin decorated with butterflies. The action made me feel quite queasy.

I remember wondering whether Opal knew what she’d said to me. I wondered whether I’d just dreamed the whole bloody thing.
Or maybe what was happening now was the dream. I don’t often think too much about what other people might be thinking and
seeing but I did wish at this point that I wasn’t so alone. If only Hannah had been with me, or Ken. They would’ve known what
was going on; they would have understood what was real.

As it happened, reality – in other words that which was deliberate and thought out – was precisely what I missed. I was surrounded
by them in the car, all talking at me, unravelling it in front of me. Why didn’t I try to jump out? Maybe it was because I
was so mesmerised by it. I am, after all, an undertaker: death is my business. I have an interest.

‘You see, the important thing about me,’ Opal said, as she draped one arm across my shoulders, ‘is that I remember
everything. I remember killing Harold Neilson, I remember Mum telling me and the rest of the girls never to tell anybody and
I remember her saying that we must stick together. That was important.’ She looked across at Sister Teresa, who was sitting
on the other side, on my left, her face pushed up against the car window, looking out into the darkened streets beyond. ‘That
was the last thing she ever said to me,’ Opal said. ‘But my sisters chose . . .’

‘You went for adoption,’ the nun said, ‘to those Green people.’

‘Yes, but I knew who my family really were, didn’t I? I’ve never forgotten a thing. I knew about my sisters and my father.
Mother and Father Green, my adoptive parents, Mr Hancock, are friends of my father. Dad would come over every week to see
me – not with his wife. She is never to know. That is understood. Some secrets are really very good. It’s all right to be
a different person with different people. I like that. I love my dad. He saved me. I think that people would not have understood
what I did to Harold. It was best I didn’t go to court. I didn’t want that and my dad gives me everything I do want, you know.’

Blatt, who was driving, turned briefly and smiled at her. Yes, he would give her everything, wouldn’t he? With no nippers
from his wife, she was his only kid: he’d do anything for her. What would he do, I wondered, if Sister Teresa told him he
might not be Opal’s dad? I felt, by instinct I suppose you’d say, that I didn’t want to find that out.

I don’t know what kind of car we were in, only that it
was big. When coppers and wardens stopped it periodically to tell Blatt about an obstruction or to direct him another way,
they acted very respectfully, as if they either knew him or recognised that the car was quality. But someone like Blatt wouldn’t
have driven anything cheap. Usually, or when I’d seen him before, he’d had a driver. That he didn’t have one now was something
else that was setting off warning sirens in my head. It made me remember that Opal might well know where I lived – she certainly
seemed, at least some of the time, to know where I went. Every muscle in my body was rigid and that included the ones of my
throat. I couldn’t speak.

‘I helped Pearl and Ruby when I knew they were in trouble,’ Opal continued, ‘and to free them so we could all be together
again. I worked very hard, planning my disguises, voices and hair to make that happen.’

‘Pearl’s in prison for something you did!’ Sister Teresa said. ‘You haven’t helped her at all! Or Ruby. And what about me?
What surprises you got up your sleeve to make me grateful to you, to bring us all back together? Gonna burn Nazareth House
to the ground, are you?’

‘Amber!’ Even in the early-morning gloom I could see that Ruby’s face was red with fury as she tipped her head in my direction.
‘Shut up, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Oh, I think he’s worked it out now!’ the nun shouted back. Then, turning to me, she said, ‘But if you ain’t, Mr Hancock,
we all lied to keep her secret all these years. Not for her but because Mum told us to. “She’s only a baby,” Mum said. “She
didn’t know what she was doing. It’s
wrong to put a kiddie up in court.” Stupid Mum! She knew all right! She killed Pearl’s husband and Ruby’s fellow.’

‘Oh, bleedin’ clever telling him!’ Ruby said.

‘Yeah? Like it fuckin’ matters now!’

Blatt chimed in with something else at this point, and then Opal spoke, but I didn’t take much notice of either of them. I
kept thinking, Opal killed Kevin Dooley and Shlomo Kaplan. How did she do that? Her reasons, to free her sisters so they could
be with her, to fulfil some sort of obligation to her mother, I could understand if not appreciate. Barmy I may be, but I’m
not that mad. But how had she killed Kevin Dooley during that night of fire and fights and sex? And then I remembered that
voice she’d put on to warn me off and I began to feel cold.

I cleared what I could from my throat and said, ‘So did you pretend to be, you know, a bloke, so you could, you know, Kevin
Dooley . . .’

‘I dressed as a boy so no one would ever be able to identify me. I am a criminal. I naturally think about things like that
and I’m good at changing my appearance,’ Opal said, with a smile. ‘Kevin wasn’t strictly homosexual, Mr Hancock, but I knew
he wasn’t too fussy about who french-polished his cock either. That’s why he was so easy to get to know. He didn’t love Pearl.
I observed him for some weeks and saw him with women and several boys who got on their knees in front of him for the price
of a pint. I just did likewise.’

‘Oh, God help us!’ Sister Teresa said.

‘Don’t be such a prig!’ Opal snapped. ‘One does what
one does to survive, as well you know. I had to get close to him to kill him. I was very good. He said so. He shut his eyes,
as men do when they’re having sex, as Harold always did, and then I stabbed him.’

‘How did you know what Kevin liked and what he didn’t?’ I said. ‘How did you find him?’

‘Oh, Daddy had found Pearl and Ruby for me some time ago. He is a solicitor, you know,’ Opal said, almost playfully. And then
she added, with more menace than I can convey on mere paper, ‘But it was I who took the decision to free them at this time.
The bombing was propitious. I couldn’t have my family subjected to violence. The things my sisters put up with! Not that I
told Daddy about it until it was over.’ She laughed. ‘And you did your bit too, Mr Hancock. Daddy had searched for Amber for
some time, but with no success. You know that those nuns lied to him when he asked them about her? But you . . .’

‘I only left Nazareth House for Pearl,’ the nun said bitterly. ‘Because I thought she was in trouble.’

‘You’re a good Reynolds girl, then, aren’t you?’ Opal said, still smiling.

The car fell silent then. I was stunned. She’d killed her sisters’ partners to fulfil some ancient promise and Blatt, unwittingly
at the beginning certainly, had helped her. But things hadn’t worked out the way she’d wanted them to with Pearl. So now her
‘daddy’ had to try to free that sister to ‘be together again’ with Opal and all because of me and my little firelit meeting
with the dying Kevin Dooley. What had he done, I wondered, immediately after
she’d stabbed him? Had he tried to hit her? And if she had been dressed up as a boy how had he known she was a woman? He’d
said that
she
stabbed him. I wanted to ask her then but my throat had closed with fear again, fear at what might lie ahead of me now. This
wasn’t the first time I’d thought I might be cashing in my chips that night but it was the first time I felt it had to be
a dead cert. Knowing what I now did, they were never going to run the risk of letting me tell anyone else.

I think we must have been near to Aldgate before anyone spoke again. Sister Teresa turned towards me and said, ‘I’m very sorry,
Mr Hancock.’

‘What for?’ I said hoarsely, even though I knew full well what for.

But neither she nor anyone else attempted an answer so, once again, I was left with my thoughts – or, rather, the lack of
them.

Going east it got worse – the devastation, the sight of shadowy figures walking like madmen among the rubble. Men and women
in negative against the fires from the incendiary bombs, people without features or identity – people who could just vaporise
without a trace. It’s what Opal had counted on – the anonymity of a people at war. I don’t know whether I was more disgusted
or afraid just then. I know I couldn’t look at any of them – not Blatt the adoring father whistling at the wheel, not that
creature still holding a pistol beside me, not those others, conspirators in their own mother’s death. And yet Ruby, at least,
had had feelings for Shlomo Kaplan. Had she forgotten them? Was this younger sister whom everyone,
it seemed to me, was falling over themselves to protect more important to her than he had been? And what of Pearl? She was
in prison because of what Opal had done.