After the Mourning (19 page)

‘Yes, thanks, Stel,’ I said, as I stared fixedly into Charlie’s big, dark eyes. ‘Can you get the water from down in the yard?’

‘Oh, is the tap—’

‘It’s off, love,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to fill up from the water butt.’

I didn’t know whether the water was off or not, but we do have a butt in the yard for rainwater. Stella picked up the kettle and left. I said to Charlie, ‘Well?’

The boy put his head down. ‘The Gentleman was made to work for Hitler in Germany,’ he said. ‘Hitler wants the magic, see, our magic.’

‘And Mr Stojka gave it to him?’ I asked.

Charlie shook his head. ‘It weren’t like that. Hitler would’ve killed the Gentleman’s
chavies
if he hadn’t done what he wanted. Gentleman got them away and then he ran.’

‘So he’s here with his children.’

‘No, they’m dead,’ Charlie said. ‘The German soldiers found them. Mum says that the Gentleman is the most important Romany in the whole world.’

I heard a groan from the floor.

‘I think this mate of yours is starting to wake up,’ Hannah said.

I passed the saucepan Stella had used on him down to Hannah and said, ‘If he starts again, use this.’

She took it from my hand with a frightening smile. ‘Gotcha.’

‘Charlie?’

‘Mr Hancock, I don’t know no more,’ the boy said. ‘All I know is that the Gentleman can’t go back to Germany but that there’s people here trying to take him back there.’

‘What people?’

‘I dunno. But if the army coppers get their hands on him he could end up being give over to traitors, so our dad says. Not saying the coppers is Nazis . . .’

‘You talked about Captain Mansard . . .’

‘He killed Lily.’

‘You know, I still think I’ve seen that MP captain somewhere before,’ Hannah said. ‘I can’t . . .’

‘Yes, love,’ I said, not wanting her to go into whether she might or might not have seen Mansard ‘professionally’. ‘Charlie, why do you think that Captain Mansard—’

‘Dad told me he done it. Said it had been seen, the murder. I don’t know why the captain done it but Dad don’t lie, leastways not to our people.’ That was something I understood to be true, that Gypsies don’t generally lie to their own, unless Charlie was lying to me. But I didn’t think he was. After all, to rope a settled Gypsy like Horatio into such an adventure as the one proposed meant that whatever was going on had to be important. But ‘magic’, just like ‘miracle’, is not an easy word for me to take seriously, and these Gypsies had used both in the past few weeks.

‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘if I did help you, I’d be taking an awful risk.’

‘Mr Hancock,’ Charlie said, ‘if Hitler gets a hold of our Gentleman there ain’t no hope for none of us. That’s what my dad says. If he gets hold of our Gentleman the Germans’ll win. We have to get him out of London. We have to.’

So that was my mind made up for me.

Chapter Thirteen

I
’d wondered how Horatio had imagined I’d be able to drive around completely unnoticed for some time. But when he told me it was obvious – just wait for a raid to begin. In the meantime I thought about the Duchess and Nan and why they weren’t home yet. If Walter brought them through on the hearse into the yard, as he probably would to stable the horses, I didn’t know what I would say. But as soon as the sirens started up we all, with the exception of Stella, got into the car and set off. I didn’t, I confess, say much to Stella about what was going on, except that she was to tell my mum not to worry. A stupid thing to say at the beginning of a raid, I knew.

Beyond thinking we were mad to be out and about, no one would bother us during a raid – or, rather, that was what I and Horatio thought. The Gypsy, who was now conscious but with a sore head, told me to drive as if we were going back to Eagle Pond. But just as I drove on to Leytonstone High Road there was a massive explosion down by the railway lines and a copper came out of nowhere to tell me to pull the car off the road and ‘get under bleedin’ cover, you daft bastard!’.

I said, ‘I’ll – I’ll just g-g-go up a bit. I’ve r-r-relatives up further.’

I saw him struggle to understand my stutter, but then he said, ‘Okey-doke, mate, whatever you say. Just keep your head down,’ and off we went again.

Although we did go north, we didn’t go anywhere near to the encampment at Eagle Pond. Where we went, away from what wasn’t, on this occasion, a heavy bombardment of the docks, was a far deeper and denser part of the forest. It’s difficult enough to see your way driving in the blackout – the covers you have to have on your headlights don’t so much lessen the light as block it out completely – but among trees and in what is really the country, it’s almost impossible to see anything. Without Horatio telling me left then right then forwards and so on, I would probably have ended up, accidentally, of course, putting the poor Lancia into a ditch. But he and Charlie knew where they were going and eventually I was told to stop and get out.

‘You wait here with the lady and we’ll be back presently with our Gentleman,’ Horatio said, as he and Charlie trudged off into nothing short of endless blackness.

When they’d both gone, I put an arm around Hannah’s shoulders and whispered in her ear, ‘I wish I knew exactly what this is really about. All this talk about Hitler and magic . . .’

‘I wish I knew why you’re whispering,’ Hannah replied, in a normal voice. ‘Middle of bleedin’ nowhere here. Christ knows where we are!’

‘Horatio and Charlie know,’ I said.

‘Oh, well, that’s just fine, then, isn’t it?’

‘Hannah.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘load of old mumbo-jumbo.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said, and I didn’t. But, then, who does? We see things like Lily Lee’s Head and assume it’s an illusion. But we, or at least some of us, see that same girl talking to thin air that she calls Our Lady and we see God Almighty.

‘I know that some people say the Gypsies have special powers,’ I said, ‘but I wouldn’t have thought that old Adolf would have been much impressed. Strikes me he has nothing but disregard for anyone who’s not a German.’

Hannah shook her head. ‘I don’t hear much, not where I am now,’ she said, referring to her present place in Canning Town, ‘but when I do see Yiddisher people they all tell the same story.’

‘What’s that?’

‘That Hitler don’t just hate the Jews, he wants what they have too. And I don’t mean their houses and businesses and suchlike. He wants what the old rabbis and the
frummers
know about God and religion and that. He wants our . . . All right, I know I said mumbo-jumbo, but he wants our “magic”, if you like. I’m not talking about what Davy Green does neither. I don’t rightly know what I am talking about, but some of the old
frummers
could, it’s said, do impossible things. My parents brought me up on such stories.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘My dad told me a story about some rabbi who walked through a wall – in Poland, I think it was. And the Gypsies . . .’

‘They’re also supposed to be able to do things other people can’t too,’ Hannah said. ‘Still bloody mumbo-jumbo, in my opinion. But Adolf’s greedy, I think. He wants to be able to do everything, he does.’

‘Well, I s’pose if you’re trying to conquer Europe you have to take all the help you can get,’ I said.

It was a light reply, and Hannah didn’t much like it. ‘You know he’s killing people and we ain’t doing nothing?’

‘We’re at war with Germany, Hannah,’ I said.

‘H, Jews and maybe Gypsies, too, were dying for a long time before this country decided to give Adolf Hitler what-for. People who got out, them in the internment camps, them like the Feldmans, they’ll tell you.’ She paused briefly to light a fag, then said, ‘I may not believe in magical mumbo-jumbo meself but if wanting it makes Hitler kill people it needs to be kept away from him.’

‘So you think I was right to help Charlie and Horatio and this Gentleman – this Stojka bloke – of theirs?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Not really. But if you believe them, H . . .’

Suddenly through the deep black undergrowth Horatio returned with a bloke I recognised walking in front of him. Even in the gloom and without the makeup I could tell – I never forget a face, living or dead. He didn’t look a bit like the photograph Sergeant Williams had shown me.

‘Hello, Django,’ I said to the man, who had once been known as the Head.

Martin Stojka smiled and said, ‘You, Mr Hancock, are doing much more for this war than you will ever know.’

An owl hooted in one of the great trees over our heads. Owls are messengers of death, some say.

‘I want some answers before I go anywhere,’ I said.

Martin Stojka smiled his enigmatic Head smile. He was thin – not like me: thin as if he’d been starved. ‘Then maybe I will drive the car myself,’ he replied, as he pulled open the driver’s door. Then, after a moment’s pause, he shut it again and laughed. ‘But I don’t drive, do I? I had a car, once, but I had a driver too. The Führer was very generous to me – in a way.’

He was a good-looking bloke in what Aggie would have called a ‘foreign’ way. Like me, he was very dark with a sallow face and long, slender nose. But he was also, as so many Gypsies are, much shorter than the average man. I reckon he had to be five feet three at most.

‘We need to get on, Mr Hancock,’ Horatio said. ‘We don’t know where the coppers might be.’

‘I need to know where we’re going and why,’ I said.

‘Get in the car, Mr Hancock. Please.’

‘Horatio . . .’

‘Bloody hell, it isn’t half brass monkeys out here!’ Hannah said, as she threw her fag down on to the ground, then rubbed her hands together for warmth. ‘Why don’t you fellas do your talking in the car, eh?’

I looked down at her, frowning. Suddenly her attitude seemed far too casual in this situation.

‘Don’t have to drive yet, do you?’ she said.

And, as usual, she was right. She was also, from the look I now saw in her eyes, playing for time on my behalf. She didn’t trust anyone or anything any more than I did. We got into the car with Martin Stojka sitting beside me at the front. In profile he reminded me again of myself or, rather, of my mother. It’s easy to see the Indian connection in some of the Gypsies, like this bloke. But it wasn’t India he talked to me about now: it was Germany.

‘My family have been settled in the city of Berlin for three generations,’ he said, as he took, with a nod, the Woodbine I offered him. ‘I have had education – I speak English, as you see – and I was, like my father, a maker of jewellery. Stojka is well-known jewellery shop. Very creative Roma people – what you call Romany or Gypsy, we say Roma – making fabulous things for big Jewish bankers, for generals, for the wife of the Kaiser.’ He laughed. ‘And also for rich Roma families, “aristocrats” from Rumania and Constantinople. Because Stojka, although
in
the
gauje
world, has never been
of
the
gauje
world. Pure Roma every one of us and something else too,’ he leaned in closely towards me, ‘something special.’

I felt all of the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Something rustled in the trees outside but I – like Hannah behind me, I later discovered – was mesmerised by this man with his guttural accent and deep, very wide eyes. And I do mean mesmerised. I’d never been in what you’d call a trance before and I haven’t been in one since, but those few moments with Martin Stojka were, I swear, genuinely strange.

‘The family Stojka are guardians of the Fourth Nail,’ the Gypsy said. ‘My father, my mother, my brothers and my wife all died before I would show it to Hitler – he so wanted it – but with my children . . .’ His eyes filled with tears, he put his head into his hands and began to sob. Released from his gaze, I felt myself again and, even though I didn’t know what he was going on about, I made as if to touch him in sympathy.

But Horatio tapped my shoulder and said, ‘Best drive on, I think, Mr Hancock.’ He looked at Stojka as he spoke and I wondered, from the strain on his face, whether Horatio felt the Gentleman had said too much.

As I turned the key in the ignition I remembered something that, if Stojka really was a fugitive from whatever, had to be important. ‘I thought you wanted Mr Stojka to get into that coffin,’ I replied, pointing to the shell we’d loaded into the hearse at the shop.

‘We can do that once we’re out of the woods,’ Horatio said.

‘Yes, but where—

‘Just get back on to the road and then we’ll see.’

‘I showed him, Hitler, the Fourth Nail. I showed him in return for the lives of my children,’ Stojka said, as he raised his head and stared at me with his wild, violent eyes. I looked away. ‘But he didn’t touch it. I told him, “Later”, I would let him touch it later. He believed me for a while.’

I was about to put the car into gear but I was too distracted now by what this man had said. I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about and I said so. ‘You’ve lost me, pal,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what you’re going on about.’

Martin Stojka sighed. ‘You know it is said that when Christ was crucified one of our people fashioned the nails that held him to the cross?’

‘You, or rather the Head, told me something about that,’ I said. ‘In Lily’s tent.’

‘It’s not true.’

So what was all this about some important nail then, I thought, and why was it the fourth that was so special?

Martin Stojka had an answer, of sorts. ‘But what is true is that a Roma brother long ago took one of the nails when the Saviour was brought down from the cross,’ he said. ‘It was the only one not used to nail Christ to the tree. It lay at his feet, bleeding his own blood for the shame of its fellows used to kill him. The Nail is power. It bleeds with the blood of God and it can do anything in this world and in others. And that Roma brother who took it, he was my ancestor, and that is why I have that Nail to this day.’

‘You have a nail from the Crucifixion?’