Bless ’Em All Page 22

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.’

  ‘You nearly strangled me,’ she said. There was no doubt that the girl was frightened.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said, holding his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I really am. It’s setting up this business. It’s taken a lot out of me.’

  The girl was still looking at him. ‘You ought to see someone,’ she said. ‘A doctor.’

  ‘I just need a holiday,’ he said. ‘But I can’t go away now.’

  ‘I think I must go home,’ she said, backing away towards the door.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk you to the station.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’ She went into the hall. The front doorbell rang. ‘Who’s that?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be going,’ she said, and opened the door. Maurice was standing there. Miss Tcherny flung herself at Maurice.

  ‘Oh God,’ she cried. ‘Thank God!’

  Maurice was startled at the sudden onslaught. ‘Miss Tcherny. What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s your brother,’ she sobbed. ‘He tried to kill me.’

  Bernard felt trapped. Reported to big brother again. Trust Maurice to get in on the act. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just a bit of horseplay.’

  ‘But what is she doing here?’ Maurice demanded.

  ‘I’m just getting the business going again. I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘You mean you’re trying to steal the business,’ Maurice said. ‘What have you done to this girl?’

  ‘Oh, you know what it’s like. They give you the eye, and then they go all coy if you follow it up.’

  Maurice was disturbed. It was clear that Bernard had attacked Miss Tcherny. He had known that Bernard was capable of many unpleasant things, but this was a new and dangerous side to his difficult brother. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’ he said to Miss Tcherny.

  ‘I am now,’ said the girl. ‘I ought to go to the police.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that the police are quite busy,’ said Bernard coolly, but inside part of his brain was gripped in a panic. ‘Besides, remember it’s only your word against mine.’

  Maurice saw that he had to do something decisive. ‘You’ll get a solicitor’s letter in the morning. It requires you to cease trading as Green’s.’

  ‘I’m starting up my own company,’ Bernard said stiffly.

  ‘But you’re using all Green’s contacts,’ said Maurice. ‘And you can’t do that. So if I were you I’d wind up this sordid little enterprise, and, in the meantime, I’ll take this young woman home.’

  Maurice and Miss Tcherny walked along together.

  ‘Now then,’ Maurice said. ‘I think you’d better tell me all about this.’

  That night the bombers came early. It was scarcely dark. Betty was alone in her dream flat, and Stephen was in hospital in Caterham. They had gone on a Greenline bus. Everybody in the place was dressed in white, and they made her put on a white gown and hat while she was there. They said she could go and see him but not yet. They wanted to assess his condition. They would let her know if there was any change. Yes, she could ring at the end of the week. She suddenly realized that, as nice as the flat was, she was going to be alone in it, that she would spend the black nights on her own. But she was well provided for, Stephen had seen to that. There was a concrete shelter in the next side street, and the Underground wasn’t far away.

  She sat at the window and saw zigzag flashes in the sky. In the distance she could see flames leaping into the sky, red and orange, sometimes purple. Guns were firing quite near by. The building trembled with the vibrations. As she watched she heard a tremendous crash somewhere below. It seemed right beneath the flat. She opened the window, but she couldn’t see anything. Then a scurry of wardens and policemen seemed to be gathering below. Cautiously she went downstairs and into the street. The plate-glass window of the shop had crashed into the street. There were big jagged sheets of glass on the pavement and in the road. Rain was lashing in on the pianos and brand-new perambulators. Then the shop manager appeared, looking less suave than he did usually, with his overcoat collar up and his hair messed up, as if he’d just got out of bed. He looked worried. He talked to the policemen and then came over to her. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard a crash.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get some workmen in the morning. Try to make it tidy. I think the police will remove the glass. What a shocking business. I hope it didn’t disturb you too much.’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep,’ Betty said. ‘The noise …’

  ‘I know,’ said the manager. ‘It’ll put us out of business for a few days. I’ll have to hang on for a bit.’

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea? You can see what’s happening from upstairs, and you’ll be in the dry.’ The manager came up to the flat and introduced himself as Mr Gerston. He sat in the window while she made some tea.

  ‘Is your husband sleeping through all this?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s away,’ said Betty. ‘Poor thing. He’s in hospital.’

  ‘Nothing serious I hope.’

  ‘It’s his chest.’

  ‘Ah. TB?’

  ‘I expect so. He’ll be all right. In the end.’

  ‘Of course he will,’ said Mr Gerston heartily, as he looked at his hostess speculatively. ‘I’m sure he will.’

  18

  ‘STAND up!’ Charlie sat on his bunk and stared inanely at the stiff figure in front of him. The corporal’s neck muscles tightened. He forced his shoulders back and his chest out. ‘Don’t you fuck about with me, boy. I know your little game, don’t I? You’re not barmy, are you? But you’re bloody mad if you think you can fool me. You’re a malingerer. What are you?’

  Charlie looked at his tormentor, apparently without seeing him. Charlie knew that this was a deadly game. It would need all his skill and cunning to come out on top. He’d lost track of how long they’d been at it. First the sergeant, then the corporal, shouting, going red, staring at him with angry eyes. His only resistance was passive. If he made an effort to defend himself they would say that he had attacked them.

  ‘Stand up. Come on, lad.’

  ‘Can I go home now?’ Charlie said.

  ‘I’ll give you bloody home,’ the corporal exploded. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ He grasped Charlie by his tunic and bunched it up, pulling Charlie’s face close to his own. Charlie could see the pigmentation on the corporal’s skin, the slight sweating on his neck, the short bristles of hair under his nose that had been missed by the razor. ‘Oh yes, you’re bloody good at it, ain’t you? Making out you’re not all there. But I know different, don’t I?’

  ‘I don’t like the clothes,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Oh,’ said the corporal, reaching the heights of mockery. ‘So we don’t like the clothes. Would you feel better in a dress and a pair of knickers? Is that it?’

  ‘What?’ Charlie said, stupidly.

  The remark about clothes had released an automatic stream of irony, and the corporal hadn’t finished with it yet. ‘Tell you what. We’ll get a bleeding tailor in. We’ll get some ponce from bleeding Savile Row, get you measured up. Can’t have you looking like a bag of shit, can we?’

  Charlie stood mute. Not defiant but accepting.

  ‘I’ve had nearly enough of this,’ said the corporal menacingly. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. Stand up!’

  Charlie shambled to his feet. ‘It’s cold,’ he said.

  ‘Cold, are we? That’s a real shame. A real bleeding shame. There’s a cure for that. Exercise. Now, come on. March! Move those feet.’ Charlie looked as though if he moved his feet he might fall down. He was limp. His trousers bagged at the knees, his arms hung uselessly by his sides.

  ‘All right,’ said the corporal. ‘If that’s how you want to play it … Make it hard on yourself.’ The corporal left the cell, clanging the do
or shut and turning the lock.

  Charlie sat down again. It wasn’t a question of keeping up this dumb show of being a useless half-wit. He had no other option. It was his defence. The young captain who was representing him had brought another officer to talk to him, one who had a crown on his shoulder.

  ‘I just went for a walk,’ he had told him. ‘I wanted to get home. I’ve never been away before.’

  ‘You did know that you were out of bounds?’ said the major, earnestly searching Charlie’s face, looking for a key to this puzzle.

  ‘I’ll do something else,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ll be an ambulance man. I’ll go in the ARP.’ He thought he had got them puzzled. If he could just keep it up. And yet, in an odd way, he knew that he wasn’t acting. He really was this half-mad incompetent who didn’t know the rules. And this half-mad person inside him was looking after him, telling him what to do, judging the reactions of his inquisitors, weighing up all the clues, watching how it was going. This person inside knew that he wasn’t mad, but he could be. It was touch and go. If he let go of his act they would have him marching up and down at the double all day and all night. He had to be solid, he had to be convincing, but surely only a madman would have embarked on this course of action. It was a puzzle.

  The major looked at him curiously, as though Charlie was a specimen he hadn’t come across before. ‘You do know what your bayonet is for, don’t you?’

  Ah. That was referring to the time he was chopping wood in the barrack room, bits of the bed at that. That corporal who told him to do it had given him a good start as the barmy recruit.

  He still thought about Rosa. Had she made any attempt to visit him, to find out how he was getting on? Did she care? His mother and father hadn’t been either. Maybe these bastards wouldn’t let him have visitors, to make him feel that nobody cared about him. That was all a part of the treatment, to break him down, to make him eat that porridge shit they brought around. Well, it wouldn’t work. He was surprised how strong he really was. He had an inner strength. He would see this through until they discharged him as being useless and barmy beyond all hope.

  He knew at the back of his mind that they couldn’t force him to do anything. They could push and shove, shout and stamp and lose their tempers, but any punishment he would receive was dependent on some co-operation on his part. If he was mad he hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t responsible for running off because he wasn’t all there. Anything he did wasn’t down to him. He couldn’t be blamed. The orderly who brought him bread and margarine had winked at him and whispered, ‘Keep it up, mate. You’ve got them going.’

  They left him for long periods when he had mad dreams of becoming invisible and floating between the bars. Mind you, they had eased off lately. When he first came in the corporal had held his arms behind his back while the sergeant punched him in the stomach until he was sick. They had signals between them, the sergeant and the corporal, warning glances, significant nods. He lay on the floor a long time to alarm them into thinking they might have done him a permanent injury. That was when he saw the signals.

  After that they confined themselves to verbal bullying, which Charlie, being a madman, couldn’t appreciate. His court-martial was still some time away. His defending officer seemed more hopeful after he had brought that major to see him. Maybe it wasn’t temporary insanity after all but something more serious, more excusable. The young captain wasn’t much older than Charlie. He was trying to take the job seriously, but you could see that he was out of his depth.

  Charlie set off on his task. He was counting all the bricks in the cell. He’d done one wall and scratched the number on the floor with his boot. He had two more full walls to do and the bits each side of the door.

  He never knew what time it was. It got dark and it got light, which was all he knew. They had taken his watch away. Maybe that was part of the treatment, just depriving someone of a sense of time. What the fools didn’t realize was that what they were doing to him was the easiest way of sending him mad.

  Rosa Tcherny was pleased to have run into Maurice. She had never liked the idea of working for Bernard. Maurice treated her with respect. She was full of the attack. ‘He was like a madman, almost as though he didn’t know what he was doing.’

  Maurice was sympathetic but seemed disinclined to delve into the matter. If she went to the police and the matter came up in court Maurice and the family name and the business would all be mentioned. Obviously Maurice didn’t want that. Besides, he was talking of starting up again. He had found a railway arch with a wooden office section in Wandsworth Road that had been used as a warehouse for fruit and vegetables but which had now been cleaned out. It wouldn’t be a permanent home, but it would do just to get things going again.

  ‘I’ve written to Jimmy and to Harry, asking them to meet me at the steps of St Paul’s on Friday at eleven o’clock. We’ll go in that tea room and talk. Can you come too?’ She readily agreed. Her old job back. And with a decent old stick, not a leering beast who jumped on you and then tried to throttle you.

  Maurice thought that the girl would be placated by the offer of a job. But the fact was that he was alarmed and worried about Bernard. Even as a boy Bernard had had an uncontrollable temper. Bernard had been slower than other boys of his age, and he had always been jealous of Maurice. Bernard was never going to accept second place to anybody for anything. Maurice wished that his father’s will hadn’t tied them together so permanently. Of course, Bernard had suffered dreadfully when that girl pulled out of the marriage at the last minute. But you couldn’t sympathize with him. Any show of fellow feeling for a fellow human being Bernard shrugged off with a snarl. Maurice ought to talk to him. True, it was only Miss Tcherny’s word against Bernard’s, but Maurice knew which one he believed. The girl had been frightened, that was clear. Was it possible that his brother was a trifle unhinged? If that were the case, what could he, Maurice, do about it? You couldn’t accuse someone of being a dangerous lunatic without real proof. He thought of talking it over with Clare but immediately dismissed the notion. Bella perhaps? She had been so decisive about the business.

  He got to Paddington just in time to hear the air-raid siren. Some of the would-be passengers immediately scurried to the Underground. Some stood, irresolutely, as though they were hoping that their train would run and take them away from the danger zone. Some stood stoically, almost daring the enemy to do its worst. Maurice had to get to the Underground anyway, so he went down the escalator with the mass of people, all looking grim-faced, frightened yet determined. The platform was the usual mess of underfoot rubbish, papers, crisp packets, bits of sandwiches, orange peel, dirty milk bottles, Tizer bottles and cigarette packets, chewing-gum and phlegm. People were standing at the edge of the platform to be the first to get on the train. Any sudden surge from the back would have tipped someone on to the line. Squatting on the floor, against the wall, were pale-faced women with bundled babies. It was like a crazy Noah’s Ark, jam-packed with people instead of animals. Each person seemed determined on their own safety with not even scant consideration of others. This was a scramble for survival.

  The train came in and the doors opened. People surged in and those that wanted to get out were pushed back inside, and then had to fight their way out again. Maurice got in right at the end and found his head and neck bent forwards by the curvature of the door when it closed. The train started with its packed human cargo, crushed into intimate contact but all staring ahead, trying to avoid the eyes of their neighbours. How many people in this carriage? A hundred, two hundred? At the first stop Maurice found himself pushed off the train on to the platform as people pressed to get off, and then pushed back in by another surge of people wanting to get on. The only good part about this journey was that he knew he was safe.

  When he changed to the Northern Line it was the same thing all over again. But then the train stopped in a tunnel and the lights went out, and there was a slight tremor of collective unease. What a way to live, Mau
rice thought.

  When he got out to the daylight of Morden he felt as though he had just been spared execution. The bus was a civilized experience. Maybe he could devise an overland route to Wandsworth Road? Had the people who had built the Underground ever dreamt that it would descend into such a dehumanizing experience?

  When he got home there was a message to call the solicitors.

  ‘Under the terms of the will the business cannot be split up without the agreement of the three shareholders.’

  ‘Good,’ said Maurice. ‘Will you send my brother a letter to that effect?’ Then he was at it. Compiling a list of titles, remembering the publishers, organizing the backlist and other items that he knew they would need, building up a list of his stock on paper: ready reckoners; Hugo’s foreign-language phrase books; Whitakers; Wisden’s Yearbooks; bloodstock books and the racing calendar; Hansard; and specialist diaries. After an hour he heaved a sigh of satisfaction. He had completely lost himself in his old world, remembering all the titles by Priestley, Wells, Huxley, Waugh, the whole canon of the Peter Rabbit books, Milly Molly Mandy, Alison Uttley, the Arthur Ransome books, Anne of Green Gables, Agatha Christie, Chesterton, Wilde – and the special editions with Beardsley illustrations – and such out-of-the-way writers as Garnett, A.G. Macdonell, Storer Clouston, Linklater, even Herbert Jenkins. They all had their followers. How many Jeeves and Wooster books were there? How many Mr Mulliner? It had been a delightful pastime.

  When Clare came in looking as if she had just been relieved at the wheel of a frigate, he regarded her fondly. Poor old Bernard. He had never known the boon of being married. Clare and Maurice had never really hit it off – in fact, they had tacitly agreed not to hit it off – but, somehow, they had stayed together, maintained a home and, in the fullness of time, become an old couple. She had found her feet after years of paddling in the shallow end. He could not deny her the pleasure of being in charge of a troupe of half-wits who looked up to her because she was the only one who could strike out with confidence, even when she was steering them in entirely the wrong direction. Clare was a genuine English eccentric, and, oddly enough, that type had become the backbone of the war effort. It was because they never questioned anything. They knew they were right. They ignored any contrary arguments. It didn’t really matter whether they were right or not; they had to be right even when they were wrong. It was this indomitable conviction that drove them stubbornly forward. Churchill had got some of it, this innate belief in the rightness of their view of life and the structure of society, that the majority of the population were better off when they were in the charge of their superiors. The trouble was that most of the ‘inferiors’ believed in the status quo as well. If they didn’t they became a political extremist, which wasn’t so funny – probably a Bolshie, with foreign allegiances.