The Camberwell Raid (7 page)

His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on his front door. He occupied only the ground floor
himself
. A young couple with a small child lodged upstairs. Opening the door, he found a tall distinguished-looking man in a trench coat and bowler hat on his step. He had a military look, emphasized by his handsome moustache.

‘Hello,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘don’t think I’ve ’ad the pleasure, have I?’

‘Sorry to disturb you,’ said the caller, ‘but I’m looking for a lady who I believe used to live here.’

Blimey, thought Mr Tooley, a toff looking for a Deptford lady?

‘Here? You sure?’ he said.

‘I was given this address,’ said Major Armitage, ‘but am prepared to believe she doesn’t live here now. I’m wondering if you know of her.’

‘What’s the lady’s name?’ asked Mr Tooley.

‘Millicent Tooley.’

‘Come again?’ Mr Tooley blinked.

‘Millicent Tooley,’ repeated Major Armitage. ‘Would you know of her?’

‘I ought to,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘she’s me daughter.’

Each regarded the other in extreme curiosity then, Major Armitage seeing a rugged but honest-looking man in a blue serge suit with iron-grey hair. A working man, and the grandfather of the child. It was something to know he was not coarse or bruising.

Mr Tooley wondered if the caller was from the plainclothes police. Milly had left a few debts behind in her time. No sense of responsibility, and she never had had. The last he’d heard of her, she and that smooth-talking husband of hers had been running an entertainments troupe which performed at seasides in the summer and got a few bookings in northern music halls during the winter. Milly had always been
mad
about the theatre, but had never got anywhere that put her in the money. Nor had her husband, some sort of a magician, whose hands had let him down when too much drink gave them the shakes at the wrong moments.

‘You are Mr Tooley?’ said Major Armitage.

‘I am. Mind, me daughter has always been known as Milly. Might I ask why you’re enquirin’ after her?’

‘Mr Tooley, have you a few minutes to spare?’ asked Major Armitage.

‘I’ve got time to spare until ten-to-eight, when I’ll be on me way to keep an appointment,’ said Mr Tooley. ‘You’re welcome to step into me parlour.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Mind you, the kitchen’s warmer, the fire’s going,’ said Mr Tooley, standing aside.

‘The matter’s confidential, Mr Tooley,’ said Major Armitage.

‘I’m a widower, I live on me own, with just a young couple and their infant, lodging upstairs,’ said Mr Tooley, wondering what ‘confidential’ meant exactly.

‘The kitchen, then,’ said Major Armitage, appreciating the straightforwardness of Milly Tooley’s father. ‘My name, by the way, is Armitage.’

‘This way, Mr Armitage,’ said Mr Tooley, intrigued now. Well, the bloke was undoubtedly a toff in his appearance, manner and speech. He took him through the passage of the old Victorian terraced house and into the kitchen, where the range fire radiated warmth. The room was tidy, its table covered by a blue and grey check oilcloth, easy to wipe down and keep clean. On it stood a silver-plated cruet. A bowler hat and a stiff brush sat next to it. ‘Help yourself to a chair.’

‘Thank you,’ said Major Armitage. He placed his own bowler on another chair. Mr Tooley sat down opposite him.

‘You’ve got me curious, Mr Armitage.’

‘Yes, that’s understandable,’ said Major Armitage, ‘and I’ll come straight to the point of my visit. Mr Tooley, I should like to frankly ask you if your daughter Milly had a child sometime during the first half of 1915, a child fathered by an Army officer.’

‘Eh?’

‘Did she?’

‘So help me, that’s winded me,’ said Mr Tooley, and thought then of his granddaughter Rosie. If Rosie had forgotten her mother, she had never forgotten him. Twice a year she called, always with Boots Adams, her adoptive father, a man Mr Tooley greatly admired. During her years as a growing girl, a man could see how attached she was to Boots, much as if he was the sunshine of her life. And what a lovely girl she was, in looks and nature. Mr Tooley thought about how she always sent him birthday and Christmas cards, and with each card there was always a little affectionate note. Rosie was pure gold, with none of Milly’s selfishness or shallowness. Her adoption by Boots and his wife Emily had to be the best thing that had ever happened to her. But what was this toff’s interest in Milly all about? ‘It beats me, Mr Armitage, you asking a question like that.’

‘I’d be obliged, Mr Tooley, if you’d answer it,’ said Major Armitage.

‘Well, I can tell you yes, she did ’ave a child,’ said Mr Tooley. ‘Out of wedlock on account of fallin’ from
grace
, as they say, which considerably upset me and her mother.’

‘Was the child a boy or a girl, Mr Tooley?’ Major Armitage was asking his questions in a quiet, civilized fashion.

‘A girl.’

‘A girl. I see.’

‘And grown up lovely, believe me,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘but would you mind telling me what business it is of yours?’

‘I’m her father,’ said Major Armitage.

‘God save the perishing Navy, you’re what?’ said Mr Tooley.

Major Armitage unbuttoned his coat, slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and drew out a silver cigarette case. He opened it.

‘A cigarette, Mr Tooley?’ he said. Mr Tooley was more in need of a large brandy than a cigarette, but he took one. A match was struck, and its flame served to light the cigarettes for both men, when Major Armitage then said, ‘Yes, I’m the father of the girl, Mr Tooley. It happened, I’m afraid, at a time when London was full of people intoxicated by the fact that the country was at war with Germany. It was, of course, the intoxication of the self-deluded, and a large number of us lost our heads, including your daughter and me.’

‘Bloody hell, I know Milly lost hers,’ said Mr Tooley.

‘However,’ said Major Armitage, ‘you must believe me when I tell you I hadn’t the remotest idea I’d left your daughter pregnant. I was posted to France with my regiment before August was over, and have to admit I gave no thought to my brief time with her, which was just a matter of a few hours at an early
wartime
party. I’m sorry, of course, at the way things turned out for her.’

‘Hold on, mister, if you didn’t know you’d left Milly expecting, what’s brought you ’ere now?’ asked Mr Tooley.

‘A friend of mine, a lady who was giving parties daily in her house during the first days of the war, has only just acquainted me with details of the consequences. It was in her house, I’m afraid, that I—’

‘Seduced Milly,’ said Mr Tooley.

‘I’m not here to deny it,’ said Major Armitage.

‘What galled me as much as anything was that Milly didn’t even know your name,’ said Mr Tooley. ‘Or if she did, she couldn’t remember it. Not a nice thing, that, Mr Armitage, a father being told by ’is daughter that she was going to ’ave a baby by a man whose name had passed her by. But it’s over and done with now, so what’s brought you here? An idea you ought to say sorry to Milly?’

‘I imagine too many years have gone by for that idea to be much good,’ said Major Armitage. ‘Can you tell me what the girl is like?’

‘Rosie?’

‘That’s her name, Rosie?’

‘Baptised Rose, but always called Rosie,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘and I can tell you she’s a fine young lady. More, she’s clever too, she’s at Oxford.’

‘Oxford?’ Major Armitage looked astonished. ‘Oxford University?’

‘Sure as I’m sitting here in me own kitchen,’ said Mr Tooley. ‘Mr Armitage, it’s a regretful thing, y’know, a man by reason of being casual missing out the years he could’ve spent with a daughter like Rosie. Still, if you can be blamed for what you did with Milly, you
can’t
be blamed for what you didn’t know about.’

‘Mr Tooley, this is actually true, my daughter Rosie is an undergraduate at Oxford University?’

‘Some place there called Somerville,’ said Mr Tooley. ‘And if you don’t mind me saying so, I don’t see you as ’er father, just as a gent that played a casual part in the making of her as a babe. Nor would she see you as her father. She’s got a fam’ly, Mr Armitage, one that’s given ’er everything she’s ever wanted, mostly a special kind of affection.’

‘A family? Do you mean her mother and a man we could say was her stepfather?’ said Major Armitage.

‘Milly and ’er husband, you mean?’ said Mr Tooley. ‘Milly never wanted ’er. Understandable in a way, but no credit to her. No, Rosie was adopted years ago. Best thing of her life, that was.’ Mr Tooley looked at his kitchen clock. Twenty minutes to eight. ‘I suppose it was natural, you coming here out of interest, but you can take it from me you don’t ’ave to worry about Rosie. She’s a young lady that’s always been happy right from the day she was given a new home at the age of five.’

‘I appreciate all you’ve said, Mr Tooley, but the fact remains I am her father, and I’d like to see her.’

‘Mr Armitage, you’re years too late. You fathered ’er, yes, I grant that, but to Rosie there’s only one man she’ll ever want as her father, and that’s the man who took ’er in when her mother deserted her, and then adopted ’er.’

‘Who is he and what does he do?’ asked Major Armitage.

‘He’s a natural-born gent name of Adams, with a business,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘and that’s about as far as you and me can go about all this. I appreciate ’ow
you
feel now you’ve found out you fathered Rosie, but it’s best to leave it as it stands, Mr Armitage. Now I’ve got to get ready to go out.’

‘Do you have a photograph of Rosie, Mr Tooley?’

‘I’ve got snaps by the dozen, being ’er grandfather, but they’re private. Like I said, best if you stay out of ’er life after all these years. I’ll see you to me street door.’

Major Armitage did not argue, nor did he show the extent of his feelings. He allowed Mr Tooley to show him out. He thanked him for his time, shook hands with him and said goodbye.

However, when Mr Tooley left the house a few minutes later, Major Armitage was still in the vicinity, and once Rosie’s grandfather had disappeared into the darkness of the March night, he returned to the front door. He had taken note of its latchcord. He pulled it, the door opened, and he went in. He was very quiet in his closing of the door. He was a man with a fine war record, and he owned reasonable principles, but such was his interest and his excitement, he had few qualms about stretching them. Using the light of struck matches, it did not take him long to locate a drawer in the parlour cabinet that contained a photograph album. He took the album into the kitchen, where the gas mantle was turned low. He turned it up, all his movements quiet. He could hear a few sounds from upstairs. In the album were pasted snapshots of a girl from her very young years to what was obviously the present.

Absorbed, he turned the pages, noting that as a girl child, fair of hair, she looked sweet. As a growing girl, delicious. As a young lady, no less than quite lovely. In some of the snaps, there were other people,
children
and adults. Which of the men and women were her adoptive parents, he did not know, but he did observe that the women had style, the men an air of self-assurance. In one of two of the later snaps, Rosie looked positively striking, her clothes faultless.

‘Ye gods,’ he murmured, ‘she’s an Armitage to the life.’ He was ready to swear she resembled his younger sister to a startling degree.

When he was ready to leave, he had with him one snapshot that had come adrift from its page, and which he thought showed her to be about seventeen. She would be nineteen now, and twenty sometime this year. And she was at Somerville, the women’s college in Oxford. And the name of her adoptive father was Adams. She would have taken that name.

Oxford had to be his next step. At Somerville College, he would make discreet enquiries. No wait, the students would be on Easter vacation now.

He returned to the parlour, struck matches, and examined a particular drawer again, moving the album aside. He found a letter, written and signed by Rosie. It gave her home address. He memorized it and put the letter back.

He left the house as quietly as he had entered it.

Mr Tooley, who had walked to the pub in a slightly perturbed state, put the man Armitage out of his mind once he was in cosy company with Ada. They chatted like friends who had known each other for years. Ada’s milk stout did its work, increasing her habitual jolly approach to a sociable atmosphere. Mr Tooley suggested a woman like she was shouldn’t live
alone
, she was made for being good company to a bloke.

‘Which bloke?’ said Ada.

Mr Tooley said there were blokes and blokes. Too right, said Ada. Mr Tooley then asked if she’d recently thought about getting married.

‘Me at my age?’ said Ada, laughing into her milk stout.

Mr Tooley assured her she was the right age for some men.

‘Some? ’Ow many?’ asked Ada. ‘More than one’s not legal, I’ll ’ave you know, Albert.’

‘There’s one bloke I’ve got in mind,’ said Mr Tooley, ‘and he’d make it legal.’

‘Which one’s that?’ asked Ada.

‘Yours truly,’ said Mr Tooley.

‘Bless me soul, you ain’t proposin’, are yer, Albert?’

‘Well, yes, I am, Ada, to tell you the truth.’

‘Lord Above!’ said Ada, ‘And ’ere’s me been thinking for months that you’d never ask.’

‘Ada, ’ave another milk stout,’ said Mr Tooley.

‘Don’t mind if I do, seein’ you’re goin’ to church me, Albert,’ said Ada, her buxom self mellow all over.

That’s one thing the Armitage toff didn’t do, said Mr Tooley to himself, he didn’t church Milly. Well, now that I come to think, I’m ruddy glad he didn’t. Boots, who’s always been a friend to me, deserves Rosie more than her natural father does.

Ongoing March, acknowledging the approach of April, gradually became bright with sunshine, and several daffodils raised their heads in Browning Street Gardens and Kennington Park to look around in
suspicion
of frost or snow. There was none of either, so they burst into golden yellow.

Miss Polly Simms, taking advantage of the academic lull following end-of-term exams, negotiated a day off from her teaching post at West Square Girls School to join Rosie and Eloise in a carefree trip to London Town. Eloise had been to the West End before, in company with Boots and Emily, but was still delighted to have Rosie and Polly show her the facades of famous theatres and their billboards, and take her in and out of shops. Polly’s pleasure came mainly from her strongly established friendship with Rosie, her favourite person after Boots. They gave themselves a leisurely hour or so for lunch, choosing that well-patronized and handsome restaurant, the Edwardian Trocadero, in the pulsing heart of the West End. Before the menus were brought to them, Eloise excused herself to powder her nose, which gave Polly the chance to ask Rosie for the latest news on developments at home.