What Was Promised (2 page)

But they already have, the hawker and the Welshman among the first to melt away. Soon only the boy and the dog are left.

He squats by the animal. He reaches out and touches her. Her head moves of its own accord. Her eyes are slits. There is a smell to her as if something has broken inside. A shiver runs up her flank.

‘Soon you’ll be dead,’ he whispers.

Someone says, ‘It will be a mercy.’

The boy looks up. The Russian spy is there. He’s poor but he never looks sick. He has an old officer’s coat. He’s wrinkling his nose at the smell of the dog.

‘Hello, Mr Wolf Witch,’ the boy says, and Wolf Witch stops wrinkling and frowns.

‘Do I know you, boy?’

The boy scratches. He shakes his head.

‘But you know me. How’s that?’

‘My friend told me. You’re the spy.’

‘Ha,’ Wolf Witch says. ‘I heard that one too.’

‘Aren’t you, then?’

‘You think a spy would dress like this? Spies know where to get new suits, and more flesh on their bones.’

Wolf Witch pats his trench coat like a man looking for his pipe. The boy is sorry for him: it’s a shame for Mr Wolf Witch that he’s not a fat spy in a new suit.

‘My friend,’ the boy says, ‘he’s got the names for everyone.’

He only says it to be nice, but Mr Wolf Witch laughs!

‘Then you must be friends with God.’

‘Don’t you believe me? Ask me. Go on.’

Wolf Witch nods at
S. FLAUM
.

‘That’s too easy,’ the boy says. ‘I can read.’

‘Who am I, then?’

‘I told you. Wolf Witch.’

‘
Wolfowitz.
’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Suit yourself. The Banana King?’

‘Clarence Malcolm, from Jamaica.’

‘The Jew watchmaker, there?’

‘Solly Lazarus.’

‘Bravo. You’ve a knack.’

‘It’s not a knack. It’s Solly, and his missus is called Dora. He’s foreign, like you.’

‘
Pff???
! Not at all. Solly is a different foreign. You know them, Solly and Dora?’

‘No. I told you, my friend gets their names.’

Mr Wolf Witch tuts. He eyes the street. The policeman has moved on a way, but the crowd makes room around him. He’s a sergeant, an older man, and not so often on the rounds these days, though Wolf Witch knows him well enough.

‘The copper?’

The boy cocks his head. He didn’t look at the policeman before, being so busy with the dogs.

It’s Mr Wise
, someone whispers.
Dick Wise, from Quilter Street. And his sweetheart was called Susan, but he called her Sukie when he was tender
–

‘Your friend isn’t so clever now,’ Wolf Witch says when he gets no answer, but the boy doesn’t grin or blush at the jibe.

‘He is. I just don’t want to say.’

‘A boy who keeps things to himself. Maybe you’d make a better spy than me. A bit more flesh, it wouldn’t hurt you neither.’

The boy says nothing. He is thinking that some names matter more than others. Some are like butter or meat. You don’t give those things away, you keep them for yourself. Dick Wise is a name that might matter.

He’ll keep it for later, then. When he’s alone with himself he’ll work out what to do with it.

If you’re lost, ask a policeman
. That’s what the boy used to be told. But things aren’t like they used to be. You have to be cautious, now, you have to mind yourself. You can get in trouble with policemen.

A noise comes out of the dog and the boy strokes its head. Its tremors are weakening.

‘I bet on her,’ he says. ‘I thought she’d have the other one. He was only small.’

‘Small like you,’  Wolf Witch says. ‘Smart like you. Small and smart is useful things. You wouldn’t bet against yourself, would you? You should have known better, shouldn’t you?’

The boy gets to his feet. His face is a state, Wolf Witch notices, dirty even for a child’s. It is seamed with grime. It makes him look for all the world like a weary, wizened old man.

‘I’ll know for next time,’ the boy says, and he walks on.

*

Evening. In the dusk the markets are almost beautiful. As the light goes they’re picked out in oil lamps and coal braziers, and here and there an old naphtha flare, hissing and sparkling.

A bomber’s moon is rising. Rob Tull wheels his barrow home. He thinks of Michael Lockhart as he goes. The way Mike looks at them all, costers and punters alike, as if none of them are fit to spit for polishing his boots. Mike’s one of those young men who thinks the world owes him a living. Well, he’ll find out, won’t he? He’ll wise up soon enough. London will knock the corners off him, it’ll snuff the pride out of his eyes, and Rob won’t be sorry when it does. They’ll get on well enough once Mike learns his place.
Chin up, mate
, he’ll say, then,
Might get some sun today. We mustn’t grumble, must we?

Two empty deepsunk rooms. A wing of kipper under a plate. Rob sits down and lifts the plate. ‘Nothing worth selling,’ he says to the kipper, ‘and no one left worth the pitch.’

Elsewhere, others eat better fare. At the Birdcage public house, in the private room upstairs, Cyril Noakes, the masterman, is mopping up his pudding with a slice of good white bread.

‘Get out,’ he says to the barmaid, who has brought up the slice, and who, until Cyril spoke, had been doing her best to smile, lingering in the hope that the handsomer of the men (the one with the stick and the gas-blue eyes) would ask for something for himself, or – even better – smile back through the sediments of smoke that dim the room’s dark fittings and the features of both men.

The barmaid gets out. She shuts the door behind her.

Neither the man nor the masterman speak. Muted by doors and stairs, the churning of voices reaches them from the saloon bar. Cyril finishes the bread. His plate is clean enough to eat off.

‘I don’t like it when they smile,’ he mutters. ‘I can’t be doing with that. If they look happy it means they aren’t working hard enough.’

Michael Lockhart holds his tongue. He knows his gaffer, and others like him. Cyril doesn’t want agreement. He only explains himself to share his modicum of guilt. It would be impertinent not to acknowledge that in silence. Michael understands the etiquette of full-blooded men, the small ethics of their small talk. To speak now would be to snub the glimpse of weakness that Cyril has offered, in the vain hope of Michael Lockhart’s fellowship. And that would be foolhardy.

Michael will be nobody’s fool.

The masterman sits back. There’s nothing left, Michael thinks, for him to stuff in his gob, but there he’s wrong: there’s still more bottled stout, and a case of cigarettes. Cyril fills their glasses, offers the case, and lights up a fresh one.

‘I always liked this place. The thing about it is, it’s peaceful. I come in here on Sundays and I get a whole room to myself. I don’t get that indoors. Sundays there’s eighteen in my kitchen, all my boys and their little ones. Or now it’s the dining room, and Sunday clothes on all of them. As if that makes it any better. Talk about a monkey house, it isn’t in it. But here . . . listen. Peace and quiet. That’s all a fellow wants, isn’t it? This is my own little corner of heaven.’

When Cyril grins, smoke escapes his teeth. The confessional moment has passed: he is at ease with himself again. ‘How are your girls?’ he asks, avuncular, and Michael thinks,
Skin and bones
, but ‘Growing up,’ is what he says.

‘I always wanted girls.’ Cyril points his lit ember. ‘Your older one,’ he says, ‘Floss. She takes after you. Same look. Spirited, ain’t she? You ought to keep an eye on that.’

These people, Michael thinks. These London men – women too – who see fit to tell him his business. So puffed up with unearned worth, they are, so full of themselves it’s a wonder there can be any room left for the shit they spout. ‘I don’t see the harm in spirit,’ he says, and when Cyril only shrugs, Michael gets the takings out and puts them on the table.

‘Not bad,’ says Cyril. ‘Better than Rob. Better than Ted, and he’s been with me since before. Too polite, that’s their trouble. You could all do better still, with the spring blooms here.’

He leaves the money where it is. It isn’t going anywhere.

‘No joy with the other line?’

Michael grimaces: it is the nearest thing he has to a smile. He reaches for his winter coat, mantled over his chair, and brings out – with a jeweller’s care – not flowers, but other bright things. A phial of Guerlain’s Shalimar; two signet rings; a medal in its satined case; a Merchant Navy sweetheart brooch; a French peach in a handkerchief; a pair of kidskin driving gloves; a three-gill hammered hip-flask; a rope of mussel pearls; and a folding knife, small as a little finger, one pearly side inscribed,
MISS MILNE.

Michael quarters the goods unequally. ‘Blossie,’ he says, as he tidies up the lion’s share, then puts names to the others. ‘Adam. Luke. The rings from your foreign boy.’

‘Leveret, his name is. He’s neat hands,’ Cyril says, but Michael says nothing. He doesn’t care to learn their names.

Cyril goes through it all, muttering and figuring: his neat-handed boys will get their earnings later, round the back of the pawnbrokers in Earl Street. He swigs the flask and makes a face. He pushes the medal away.
For Gallantry in Saving Life
, it says, and there is a name, too,
Hubert Loughlin
, in tiny letters round the rim.

‘No call for that,’ Cyril says.

‘I told him as much.’

‘Blossie, was it? I’ll have a word. That’s more trouble than it’s worth. It’s always the best boys go too far. What’s this, a penknife?’

‘Fruit knife.’

‘Looks like silver.’

‘Sheffield marks. It’s nice work.’

Cyril looks up quick. ‘And what would you know about that?’

‘I know a good thing when I see it.’

‘Do you, now? Well, it might be worth a bob or two.’

Cyril takes the money like a diner who has saved the best until last. He rakes it up, counts it out, pockets his cut and pushes the rest – a third of the take and a fence’s tip – back to Michael.

‘That for last month. More next, if you keep it up. You’re turning out alright, Mickey. You’re coming along. It might be you could handle a bit more responsibility. You could square things with the boys yourself, if you know what you’re doing. I wouldn’t miss them hanging round the shop. I get all kinds in now. It gives the wrong impression, the boys. There’d be extra in it for you. What would you say to that?’

‘I wouldn’t say no,’ Michael says.

‘No promises. You better know what you’re about, I won’t straighten it with you if you pay over the odds. Well, we’ll try it. See how you go.’

‘Mr Noakes,’ Michael says, choosing his words one by one, ‘I can do more for you, if you’ll give me the chance.’

‘Well, aren’t you the squeaky wheel tonight?’ Noakes says, and looks at his watch. ‘You won’t say no to a game, either? Same place as last time. Same crowd.’

‘I’d be delighted.’

‘No hurry. Not throwing-out time yet. See off your drink, why don’t you? A shame to let it go to waste.’

And he opens Miss Milne’s knife, admires the tiny blade, and cuts a flank off the peach.

*

Downstairs, a small woman sits alone in the Birdcage’s saloon. Her name is Dora Lazarus: she is the Jew watchmaker’s wife. Dora is promising herself she isn’t going to talk too much.

She talks when she’s nervous. She thinks when she’s nervous, too. Sometimes she talks to herself, and sometimes her thoughts fly away from her. When she’s happy she sings and doesn’t think of anything. Solly teases her about it.
Dora is singing,
he says.
She must be kissing or cooking.

She isn’t singing now. This isn’t where she belongs. What will people think of her, alone in a public house? The Birdcage is full of men. Not quiet men like her Solly, but loud ones, like those he works with in Petticoat Lane; like the Banana King, Clarence Malcolm, though really Clarence is good as gold. Besides, the Lane is not the Birdcage. There is fresh air in the Lane – there is room to shout – there is something to shout about! A market man has to shout because who would buy if he didn’t? Who would know he was alive? The shouting makes him what he is. He shouts the words his father shouted in the streets before the war. That is a
useful
kind of noise.

Even Solly shouts sometimes. Dora has seen him try.
The right time, all the time!
he shouts. He isn’t very good at it. He’s too shy for shouting.

Now there are men looking at her. Dora can feel it. Some of them she knows by sight. They are her neighbours, she supposes, from the Columbia Buildings. She wonders what they think of her, coming here, into their place.

She wishes they wouldn’t look.

And why is it called the
Birdcage?
Dora had a birdcage once, with a pretty bird in it. The people in the Birdcage are not pretty birds. There are so few other women: Mrs Joel the publican, and a barmaid who looks pale and two old ladies in a corner. One of them has a pint of beer. And all the men are talking, smoking, drinking, laughing, singing (not like birds), making noise with their boots and glasses, elbows, tables, and the piano (which is full of sour notes). All at the same time!