One Fight at a Time (4 page)

He segued slowly from soldier into uneasy peacekeeper.

*

In the compartment he dozed again. Woke up as the train stopped in Bath. No one moved in. Zoe and he remained alone.

“Why are you going to Bristol?” she asked.

“Because... on a cold, rainy, Easter Saturday nine years ago, a family in Bedminster showed me a kindness. And I want to see them again.”

“You kept in touch?”

“Ellie and I wrote to each other,” he said. “Every couple of months or so, until the weeks before D Day. At which point, all letters out of the bases were censored. And then during the fighting, well... mail got lost, un-posted and un-delivered. We swapped letters while I was in Berlin. And again, when I got back to the UK.”

“Where does the family live?”

“Gladstone Street.”

Zoe smiled at him. “I’ll take you there.”

“No no. Not if it’s out of your way.”

“It isn’t.”

Outside the window, the Station Master stepped into vision and looked back along the platform. He hoisted a green flag, put his whistle into his mouth and blew three blasts. A single blast echoed a response from the guard at the rear of the train. The Station Master turned and waved ahead at the driver. The carriage lurched, there was a series of steam bellows from the locomotive and the train began to move again.

“Fifteen minutes into Bristol,” Zoe said.

Grover nodded. The suburbs of Oldfield and Twerton trundled by.

Chapter Four

In Bristol, Zoe led the way out of Temple Meads to the station car park; a cleared and flattened bomb site which backed on to the old cattle market. She pointed at a graceful, dark maroon Riley.

“Here we are.”

The one and a half litre RMA, was a car for people on the rise. Sleek and desirable. Grover wondered what Zoe did for a living.

She unlocked the driver’s door, climbed in, tossed her handbag onto the back seat, leaned across the car and unlocked the front passenger door. Grover got in, suddenly enveloped by the welcoming smell of wood panelling and soft leather. The Riley fired first time and Zoe negotiated her way out of the car park. A couple of minutes later, driving along Redcliffe Way towards the river, she spoke again.

“Tell me about your interest in the law.”

Grover blew out his cheeks and leaned his neck against the top curve of the seat.

“At the time, it seemed the most worthwhile thing I could do.”

“And now you don’t know?”

“As I said, it was a long time ago.”

“I’m a lawyer,” she said. “A barrister.”

Grover turned his head and looked at her. “That’s the guy... sorry person... who works the courtroom.”

“Yes it is.”

“Because at home, we do it differently.”

“You have Perry Mason,” Zoe said.

Grover laughed. “Yeh. That says it all.”

Zoe crossed the river and drove through south Bedminster, roads and avenues still bearing the scars of the blitz. A few minutes later, she swung the Riley into Gladstone Street.

“What number?”

Grover nodded ahead through the windscreen.

“The shop on the corner.”

Zoe coasted towards the corner, pulled the car to a stop and switched off the ignition.

“Are they expecting you?”

“Kind of. I wrote them last week and said I’d try and get here.”

Zoe swivelled round and reached onto the rear seat. She collected her handbag, swung back to the front and put the bag on her knee. She dug into it, came out with a business card and passed it to Grover.

“Will you call me before you leave?”

“Yeh. Sure. Thanks.”

Grover put the card in the inside pocket of his coat and opened the car door.

“Thanks for the lift. And for your company,” he said.

“Don’t forget. Call me.”

Grover got out of the car and closed the door. The Riley fired up again and purred away from the kerb. He watched as it swung right and disappeared from view. He turned and scanned the front of the building. The place looked brighter and more prosperous than it had done nine years ago. It was sporting a new coat of paint. The windows were full of brightly packaged stuff. Grover stepped into the shop doorway.

He took a deep breath and pushed the shop door open.

The top of the door hit a lever attached to the door frame and a bell rang out. Cheerfully. Optimistically. He closed the door and the bell rang again. The shop counters were the same, but the wood frames had been sanded down and re-stained in a lighter oak. The floor too. The shelves on the walls behind the counters had been re-built. Altogether, the place seemed to have acquired a newly minted sense of purpose.

Grover stood in the spot he had nine years earlier and waited.

Ellie Morrison stepped into the shop from the back kitchen. She paused, waited just a fraction of a second, until recognition dawned. Then she grabbed the hinged counter top, lifted it up and over and stepped into the middle of the shop floor. Grover wrapped his arms around her, breathed in, and held her tight.

Ellie held on too. Then she stepped out of the embrace and looked Grover up and down.

“My my,” she said. “My oh my.”

He breathed out again.

“You look terrific,” he said.

And she did. Nine years on and now in her sixties, but with the blue eyes as brilliant as ever.

“So do you,” she said. “And considerably drier.”

Grover grinned. Ellie moved to the shop door, turned the open/closed sign around and took his arm. Grover looked at the door.

“You’ll lose business,” he said.

“The customers will come back.”

She ushered him though the gap in the counter and on into the back kitchen. This had been painted too. The furniture was the same and in the same place and a fire burned in the grate. But like the shop interior, the room looked and felt brighter

“Give me your coat,” Ellie said.

Grover took it off and passed it to her. She stared at his uniform jacket. “Just look at you. From aircraftsman, to boss of the squad.”

“That’s it.”

“I thought about you a lot.” Ellie said. “We all did.”

“Thank you. I made it.”

“Yes you did.”

She dropped his coat onto the table, grabbed him and hugged him again.

“I got something for you,” he said, over her shoulder.

Eleanor let go of him.

“In the greatcoat pockets.”

She picked up the coat, draped it over her left arm and searched through the pockets. She found two sealed silver foil bags, each with one word stamped on it.

“Tea!”

“Got it from the RAF Quartermaster. Had to promise him the earth.”

“Then we must celebrate with some. As strong as you like.”

Ellie picked up the kettle and went into the wash house to fill it. Grover listened to her clattering about and watched the kettle steaming on the fire grate.

They sat at the table, tea cups in front of them, the milk jug and tea pot between them. Grover gave her a précis of his last weeks in Germany and his return home. Ellie listened, fascinated by the story of life in conquered Europe. She asked him what it was like in post war Berlin.

*

What Grover remembered was the struggle to control chaos.

Berlin was one hundred and sixty kilometres inside the Soviet Empire – policed in the west by Britain, France and the United States; in the east by the Soviet army. Stalin hated the arrangement and he had a quarter of a million soldiers wrapped around the city.

Charlie Company was billeted in Nissan huts erected in a park, east of Tempelhof Airport. Not much at first glance, but they had toilets that worked, running water and hot showers. There was a cookhouse, a dining hall and a recreation room which doubled as a cinema.

Baker Company was dispatched north, to look after the Schonberg and Kreuzberg districts. Once an area of wide boulevards and four storey houses, until the allied bombing raids and Soviet artillery barrages tore the guts out of the city - peopled now by old men, women and children.
They
asked
for
it
seemed the majority opinion from Baker Company.
Maybe
, Grover thought, but he could not look at the devastation without wondering if round the clock pounding with incendiary bombs wasn’t just plain vengeance. At least, the western allies were now delivering tins of Spam, instead of bombs. Trouble was, some of them were going missing. And turning up again in black markets all over West Berlin.

Grover put two and two together very quickly. There was not a kilo of anything produced in West Berlin. There was one source only. And it was coming into his part of the city in US planes. Nobody gave a damn about GIs passing on their free ‘Luckies’ to the frauleins, or the odd kilo of gasoline disappearing. But coal, potatoes, flour and medicines were a different matter altogether. Sometimes a matter of life and death.

He encountered his first Berlin body in an alleyway off Potsdamer Platz. A girl, fifteen or sixteen maybe. A skinny kid, in a tattered green dress. Raped and strangled. She had no identification papers. Stolen by the killer to delay any investigation.

“I recognise her,” one of the MPs said. “There’s a floating black market along Unter Den Linden. She’s part of that. Don’t know her name. Just another street kid.”

“Nobody’s ever ‘just’ anything,” Grover said. Angry at the loss of yet another life. He asked what would happen to the body.

“There’s what passes for a morgue round the corner, on Wedenstrasse,” the MP said. “She’ll be taken there. We’ll make some enquiries, see if we can find a relative.”

“And if you can’t?”

“Then she’ll be buried with a bunch of other people with no names.”

“For chrissakes...”

The MP looked into Grover’s eyes and shrugged. “Best we can do. Last week we found a dead boy, maybe five years old, in a cardboard box.”

Grover stared at the MP. And in that moment, he decided ‘best’ was not good enough. Sure, it was difficult to care seriously about anybody in this charnel house. But no sixteen year old girl should perish in a shithole back street, unknown, un-mourned, forgotten.

He asked Lieutenant Berger, for permission to investigate.

Two days later, newly promoted Sergeant Major Grover was transferred to Charlie Company and re-located to Tempelhof Airport. He appreciated the pay hike, but he was angry at being moved. He wanted to do something about the dead girl. The army wanted him out of the way. He asked Berger for an explanation. He was not given one.

So he focussed on the airport; and on the non-stop work to get stuff distributed around battered West Berlin. Until December 1949, when the men of the 21st Infantry were told they were going home.

*

At the table, Ellie had been engrossed in the story.

“And nobody did anything about the girl?”

Grover shook his head, reached out and poured himself another cup of tea.

“So come on,” he said. “News from the home front.”

“What can I tell you?” Ellie said. “Oh yes... Arthur is going to retire in the summer. Business in the shop gets a little better every time something comes off ration. We should do alright.”

“What about Harry?”

Ellie breathed ‘Mmmm’. Looked down at the table top. Shifted in her seat. Her answer was a long time coming.

“I’m worried about him,” she said.

“Why. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not sure about that either.”

She sighed. Sat back in her chair. Grover reached across the table. Enclosed her left hand with his right.

“Come on. From the beginning,” he said.

Ellie twisted her left wrist and squeezed Grover’s hand. Then she freed it and sat up straight in her chair.

“Harry’s school certificate grades were good. But he wouldn’t stay on in the sixth form. Insisted he wanted to get a job. He left school, despite protests and advice to the contrary.”

“Did he get a decent job?”

“For a while. After half a dozen odd choices, Harry decided he wanted to be a journalist. He got a job on the
Post
as a cub reporter. Which basically involves making the tea. But he did alright. He was enjoying it. Starting to get out and about shadowing reporters, assisting sub editors on the preparation of stories. Then suddenly, he decided he didn’t want to be a reporter any more. I persuaded him to work here in the shop. I guess I still live in the hope that, one day, he’ll take over the business.”

“How long did that last?”

“Not much more than a couple of months. He did more odd jobs, here and there, for cash. Then he was called up for national service. You know how that works?”

“Sure.”

“He did his eighteen months. Twelve of them at Warminster and the final six months in Germany. A Rhine Army base near Osnabruck. He came back from it all, smiling, fit and happy to be home. He wangled himself a job at the
Hippodrome
. As a lime operator.”

Grover wondered for a moment. Ellie elaborated.

“You know, those big lamps up in the gods, used to spotlight the main character on the stage and follow him around. Limelight.”

“And he’s held that job down has he?”

“So far. But...”

Ellie paused, collected a jumble of thoughts, put them in order and went on.

“Harry didn’t work on Saturday. Somebody else was doing the matinee and evening shows. He went off somewhere during the day. He hasn’t been back.”

“So when did you last see him?”

“At breakfast Friday morning. He said was going to spend the day with his friend, Nick Hope. They were at junior school together. They lost touch for a while, then met again at Warminster, when they were called up. They did their army basic training together. Went to different postings, but came home within a couple of weeks of each other, last autumn. Nick has a flat on Cumberland Road, near the Albion Dock. Sometimes Harry stays with him. Sleeps on the sofa. That’s why we weren’t concerned when he didn’t come home.”

“And what does he do? Nick, I mean.”

“I don’t know exactly. He works, in some capacity or other, for the man who owns the flat he rents. Roland Bevan.”