Wartime Wife (13 page)

Harry nodded. ‘Just a few bob? I was hoping to make a few quid, and I don’t mean just from cigarettes.’

Charlie shook his head and waved one hand as though dismissing Harry from his vicinity. ‘You’re a greedy little bastard, Harry, and you ain’t thinking straight. You’re only just starting out on your chosen career, and I ain’t referring to making the bloody stuff you sell. But you still got a lot to learn, and everybody got to do an apprenticeship, don’t they?’

‘I’m in a hurry.’

‘Not when you’re working for me you ain’t. I like things done properly so I believes in training my people to do a good job.’

‘So what would I be training for?’

‘Everything I know. Ain’t got no son of me own and I’m gettin’ on. I fancies passing on me knowledge, though I have to say, I ain’t quite sure what we’re going to be dealin’ in, though I think food at first. This rationing they’re on about ain’t gonna be well received. So I’m sorting out some contacts in the food line. Then there’s all these foreigners coming in from abroad. Not all of ’em are kosher if you know what I mean and them that ain’t are going to be without passports and other important paperwork. And petrol! That’s another thing going to be rationed. So what do you want to do? Are you in, or out?’

Harry locked eyes with a face in the crowd. The eyes were blue, the nose straight above a Cupid’s bow of a mouth.

He dragged his attention back to Charlie. His mind was agile enough to deal with two trains of thought at once.
You should have been a ballet dancer
, his mother had said. This had been on the basis that a dancer counts beats while whirling across a dance floor.

‘It sounds interesting. Do you think it will pay well?’

Charlie smiled. ‘Once it really gets going, we could make a real packet. Do you want to shake on it?’

Harry shook his head. ‘No. Anyone watching will guess we’re doing a bit of business, and the Ship’s got a bit of a reputation.’

Charlie opened his eyes wide, pulled his hat more tightly down on his head and looked around him. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘So I hear.’

‘By the way,’ said Harry as Charlie prepared to leave, ‘what happened to Gladys’s face?’

Charlie turned up his coat collar and tightened his belt.

‘Didn’t do ’er training right. Made a stupid mistake and paid the price.’

Harry didn’t ask who’d cut her face; he could guess. Lingering over his beer once Charlie was gone, he searched the bar for the blue eyes and Cupid’s bow lips. Just as he’d anticipated, the face he’d seen in the crowd made his way over.

Slowly and without saying a word, they looked each other up and down.

Harry introduced himself. ‘Harry.’

The pink lips smiled. ‘I’m Mark. Pleased to meet you.’

Michael washed the pawnshop windows with warm water and a soft chamois, scrubbed the handsome black and white tiles of the porch and polished the brass door handle. Once the shutters were put away, he criss-crossed the windows with tape as advised by the War Department.

After that he stood back and surveyed what he’d done. He was particularly proud of the tiles; they shone, a handsome welcome to potential customers, but something else. They also reminded him of the hallway of the house he’d grown up in, filling him with a nostalgic longing to turn back the years, to make things better than they had been.

To feel such affection for a few old tiles, he thought. He shook his head and smiled at his foolishness.

A group of boys, no more than ten years old by the look of them, came running past kicking a tin can.

They were noisy, shouting, laughing and diving around all over the pavement. In the throes of tackling for the tin can, they danced into the doorway and over the black and white tiles leaving dirty footprints in the residual wetness.

Preoccupied with his personal thoughts, Michael spun round on them too quickly, too angrily.

‘
Verboten
! Get out of there!’

At first he didn’t understand why their jaws dropped and their eyes widened in surprise, until he realised that, in his haste, he had shouted at them in German!

An icy shiver trickled down his spine. He’d warned himself to think in English so he would automatically speak in English, just as he’d done before his mother had married the pastor. The thought of what might happen could upset all his plans. He’d be interrogated, most likely flung into prison or incarcerated in one of the detention centres for enemy aliens he’d heard about.

Inside he cringed, but common sense kicked in and he attempted to make amends.

‘I did not mean to shout,’ he said, attempting to smile and taking a step towards them.

The boys eyed him warily. There were three of them and definitely not from the best side of town. Their hair was stiff with the dried remnants of carbolic soap. Their sleeveless pullovers of multicoloured Fair Isle were baggy around the bottom from constant washing and the armholes sagged as though the garment had originally been knitted for someone bigger.

One of the boys, the eldest if his size was anything to go by, leaned across to one of his friends, whispering in his ear.

A kind of enlightenment appeared on their faces coupled with a mischievous gleam in their eyes.

‘Gerry!’ shouted the biggest, half turning to make good his escape.

‘Gerry! Gerry! Gerry!’ shouted the others, all in unison now, yelling their loudest at the same time as running backwards away from him.

‘I am Dutch,’ he called to them, but doubted they heard, or even if they had done, if they would understand. A foreigner was a foreigner and likely to arouse suspicion in the present climate, no matter what.

The boys ran off towards the main road.

Michael eyed the windows of the houses opposite with guarded apprehension, searching for the telltale sign of a twitching curtain. He knew they watched, but wondered if they had heard. Perhaps not. The day was cold and all sensible people were keeping their windows closed.

It helped calm his nerves to do more scrubbing and cleaning: sweeping the shop floor, polishing the trembling glass of the display cabinets where gold rings and watches jostled for space alongside silver cruet sets and glass paperweights.

At last he was satisfied, so satisfied that his slip of the tongue and the catcalls of the street kids were, at least, partially forgotten.

Everything in the shop was ready for business, which turned out to be slow in coming.

He didn’t know why he had expected people to come trooping in with their valuables once they saw the shutters were off and someone new was in residence. He’d even accepted that some would come in just for a glimpse of the new owner; they’d obviously seen him working. But the strange thing was
no one
came in to do business;
everyone
came in to stare.

As it was a Wednesday, he’d done the same as he’d seen the other shops in the rank do and closed at one o’clock. He’d noticed they never opened on a Wednesday afternoon and resolved to do the same. After all, he wanted to fit in so must do as everyone else.

Two women came in around midday, supposedly to survey what was on offer. He could see from the moment they entered that
he
was the object of their curiosity.

‘Can I help you with anything, ladies?’ he asked, the deep timbre of his melodious voice causing one of the women to raise her hand to her breast as befitted a maiden rather than a maiden aunt.

‘Thank you! But we’re just looking.’ She sounded breathless, even a little excited, and the way she looked him up and down was really quite shameless.

Her friend, a wide woman with the jowls of a bloodhound, was not so taken aback. Her eyes were like black beetles burrowing into his soul.

‘We have to see if we can trade here. There’s a lot of foreigners about and a war on. Who knows who’s who and what’s what? It don’t hurt to be careful.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and dropped his gaze. For a moment he was back there – the place where it was all happening.

‘You don’t sound from round here. Foreign are you?’ asked the first woman.

‘I was born here.’

‘Don’t sound like it.’

‘I’ve lived abroad for a while.’

Beetle Eyes asked, ‘So where are you from?’

The strident enquiry had been answered a dozen times already that morning. He gave the same answer.

‘I was born here but have recently lived in Holland. My parents live in Holland. My father is a minister of the church.’

It was a lie, but a convenient one. His father was his stepfather and was a minister. Michael had despised him for it. The country was Germany not Holland. Lying gets easier and easier the more you did of it, and Michael had done a lot – a terrible amount.

The sour-faced woman tossed her head in an exaggerated nod. He’d won her approval.

‘How much for this salt shaker?’

Michael took it out from the cabinet. The shaker was an electro-plated imitation of an eighteenth-century silver original. Anyone with taste would not have bought it. He sold it to her for two shillings and sixpence. He didn’t know
whether it was a fair price, it was just the first figure to come into his head.

They left shortly after. Michael stared at the open door. They were long gone by the time he closed it. He told himself there would be busier days once he made sure they believed he was from Holland. Tomorrow would be better.

That night he made himself a meal and listened to the fine strains coming from the wind-up gramophone. He had chosen Schubert – something soft and gentle to ease his troubled soul.

By the end of the week, the little cash drawer behind the counter held only a little silver and about two pounds’ worth of copper coins.

A typical customer was a man who called in wanting to retrieve a set of silver spoons given to him as a wedding present by his mother.

‘What with this war going on, she’s coming to live with us. Frightened to death she is. Couldn’t tell her I put her spoons in hock because a greyhound that should have won stayed at the back of the pack.’

It wasn’t much money, but better than nothing. Michael looked at it in the palm of his hand and mused about why he wasn’t making more.

‘Make the most of it,’ said the man. ‘Go out and have a few drinks before you gets called up.’

‘I am not quite physically fit.’

The man looked him up and down. ‘You seems healthy enough. Takes one hell of an injury not to present as A1.’

‘Looks are deceiving.’

Looks are deceiving.
He’d learned that phrase back in Germany and well knew its worth. Looks, indeed, were deceiving. So also were actions.

A woman came in later. She was looking for a wristwatch as a going away present for her husband.

‘One he can count the minutes on until he gets back,’ she said, her eyes misted, her head drooping like a damp flower. ‘I tried the other pawnbroker in Kent Street, but she didn’t have anything.’

Michael frowned. When the shop was shut he’d taken the opportunity to get to know the area better, walking around and around, noting shops, houses, bus stops and likely competition. He did not recollect seeing a pawnshop.

‘I did not see any shops in Kent Street.’

‘Oh. There’s not. It’s just a woman. She runs a bit of a business from the back of her house. Nothing much, mind you, just little things for the neighbours.’

She bought a watch. Fifteen shillings – his biggest transaction so far, but it wouldn’t be enough for what he had in mind. He needed more customers, he thought, gritting his teeth as the truth suddenly dawned. There was competition: unfair, illegal competition. He slammed the door shut behind the woman who’d bought the watch.

Another Wednesday: after shutting up shop at one o’clock, he put on his good suit and made for Kent Street, a cul-de-sac not too far away. The terraced houses looked flat and bland, the surface of the pavements shining bright and brittle in the autumn sunlight.

A communal shelter was being erected at the end of the street. There was a shop on one corner, an ARP station being erected on the other. The sight of shelters and suchlike filled him with despair. Already, before hardly a shot had been fired between Britain and Germany, the war was taking over people’s lives.

Nobody paid any attention to the tall man whose careworn expression belied his years. They too would look older if they’d gone through what he had, but they wouldn’t know and
he wouldn’t tell them. Secrets, trials and tribulations were not meant for sharing.

It was two o’clock. Women standing at doorways watched what was going on, exchanging comments with their neighbours. Some jiggled babies on their hips. Being careful not to betray his accent, pronouncing every word with care, he asked one of them where he could find the pawnbroker.

A woman stopped wiping the snot from her baby’s nose and eyed him suspiciously, as though considering whether she could trust him with such important information. She made up her mind that she could. ‘Number ten, but you’ll have to go round the back. She doesn’t do business at the front. There’s an alley …’ She pointed. ‘That way.’

Stepping over piles of sandbags and skirting pools of newly poured cement, he made his way through an archway running beneath and between the end houses. The alley was narrow and made narrower by yellow flowering weeds and nettles and hummed with the sound of machinery from a soap factory whose wall ran along the back of the lane.

On the other side, chicken coops, garden sheds and ramshackle greenhouses crowded the long narrow gardens, the homemade greenhouses only big enough to hold a tribe of tomatoes and a few boxes of seedlings.

The houses were not numbered at the rear, so he relied on memory to count each house from the archway and thus reach the right one. His hand closed over a green iron gate. A narrow path wound between a fence and a line of washing. There was no shed or greenhouse, just an upright oblong of bricks that he guessed was a lavatory.

He made his way up the path, dodging the billowing sheets as he went. The building described to him was no more than a shed tacked on to the back of a Victorian terraced house. The door was closed. He tried the handle. It was locked so he went
to the back door of the main house and knocked at the door with his bare fist.