Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts (16 page)

‘I don’t care where he ends up, Nell, just so long as he’s not causing trouble for the family here.’

The waitress had brought them steaming cups of coffee and plates of toast, and they were silent for a while as they ate. Nellie put her hands round the hot mug and sipped her coffee.

‘Don’t you think he’ll ever come back?’

‘’Course he’ll come back some time. This is his home, after all.’

But Nellie wasn’t convinced and perversely, now that she knew he was alive and well but seemingly out of reach, she started to feel the old tug upon her emotions. It was like a prison door swinging shut and she sat up with a start as the door of the coffee shop banged open in a gust of icy wind. Both girls looked up as the large, blue-uniformed figure filled the doorway and quickly shut it behind him. The young constable scanned the room and then walked over to their table. ‘Either of you two young ladies Nellie Clark?’

Terror slammed into her heart like an icy fist and she gripped the mug so tightly that it shook as she placed it back on the table. ‘That’s me,’ she stammered.

The policeman looked pleased with his own detective work. ‘Thought it was one of you two, you can’t disguise that Duff’s coating!’ He pointed to the light dusting of yellow powder that clung to their shoes and the fringes of hair that hadn’t been covered by their work caps.

‘What’s it about?’

Nellie heard Lily’s voice, strangely thick. If her own face were as white, they must look like a pair of ghosts, she thought.

‘We need to ask Miss Clark some questions about a very serious crime, an incendiary blast near Tower Bridge last week.’ He paused to see her response, but, now she’d pulled herself together after the initial shock, she managed to keep her face a blank. She’d had years of masking her feelings under her father’s deep scrutiny.

‘We believe we have the perpetrator, miss, and he seems to think you can give him an alibi.’

Nellie saw Lily about to open her mouth and quickly kicked her under the table. The less they said the better. Whatever plan Ted and his friends had made to get him away had obviously gone horribly wrong. But how had the police tracked him down in Hull?

‘Well, I’m sure we can clear this up quickly, but I’d like you to come down to the station, miss.’

Nellie’s legs were like water, so she was grateful that the policeman saw fit to put a hand under her elbow. Above all she was desperate to keep Lily out of it. So long as the bobby didn’t know who she was, Lily might escape questioning. It would be better for Ted if she could at least get home and warn her parents to expect a policeman’s knock themselves.

‘Lil, will you tell the foreman what’s happened and if I’m not back by clocking-off time, tell me dad too?’

Lily nodded and hurried off through the snow flurries, back in the direction of Pearce Duff’s. Nellie prayed she would have the sense to go straight home and warn her parents first.

Oh, Ted Bosher
, she thought,
I knew you’d ruin me; if only you
had
been halfway to Russia.

She felt sick as she walked up the stone steps of the newly built Tower Bridge Police Station. She had never been in such a place, and was filled with shame and fear that she’d be spotted going in by someone who knew her. She probably feared her father finding out more than the grilling she anticipated from the police. Although Nellie’s family were considered respectable among their own class, they shared the deep Bermondsey distrust of the ‘Old Bill’. So much of their life was lived just outside the confines of the law, and even those who thought themselves respectable were too poor to turn down the odd crate of foodstuffs that ‘fell off the back of a cart’ down at the docks. But underground transactions between friends were one thing; bringing the family into the line of fire was another. Nellie was only too aware that her head was poking well above the parapet and she was about to become a visible target. After the kindly desk sergeant with the droopy moustache had taken her details, she was shown to a back office to await her interrogator. The detective, who introduced himself as Stone when he came in, was a clean-shaven, chubby-faced, middle-aged man in a suit, who looked more like a grocer than an officer of the law. Nellie felt heartened; he didn’t look too mean. But as soon as he began his questions, she understood that he was sharper than he looked.

‘Now, Miss Clark, don’t look so frightened. You’re not in any trouble,’ he said kindly. ‘Just answer my questions as best you can and you’ll be home by teatime. Talking of which...’ He made a drinking gesture to the bobby standing at the back of the room, who nipped out and was soon back with two cups of strong tea, the sweetness of which helped to steady Nellie’s nerves. Her mouth felt as dry as dust and she gulped her tea down, as Detective Stone continued.

‘Now, the constable told you this is in connection with a bomb blast on the eighth? Well, your friend was witnessed on the night of the incident, in the vicinity of what we believe was the bomb workshop.’ Here Inspector Stone paused for what seemed to Nellie an awkwardly long time, scrutinizing her intently, then he smiled abruptly and went on. ‘But
he
insists he was with you at the time of the explosion. Can you confirm where you were on the night of eighth December, Miss Clark?’ He smiled again, this time more encouragingly.

She’d had the presence of mind, during her walk to the police station, to work out her story. She’d heard the best lies were those based in truth, so she launched in with a show of confidence she hoped would be more convincing than it felt to her.

‘The eighth, was that a Sunday?’

The policeman nodded but said nothing.

‘Well, I think I do remember that night, because I went for a walk with my chap in the park, before we went to the Star.’

The detective nodded and looked at his notebook. ‘And afterwards?’

‘Well, we walked home and then…’

‘Go on, Miss Clark, don’t be shy,’ he encouraged her.

‘Then we went into Wicks’s stables.’

‘And the purpose of your visit?’ Stone looked as if he was enjoying her blushes.

‘It was snowing and the stables are warm… well, truth is we never get a chance to be on our own…’

‘So you went there for a bit of canoodling, is that what you’re telling me?’

Nellie nodded; her reputation was the least of her worries. The detective smirked. ‘Well, that seems to corroborate your friend’s statement. I won’t keep you any further, Miss Clark.’

He shut up the notebook and showed her out of the office. Nellie felt like sprinting out of there like a hare at the greyhound track, but she purposely slowed her steps to match the inspector’s leisurely gait.

‘He didn’t seem like the type to me, as it happens,’ he remarked as they walked towards the entrance hall. ‘Respectable fresh-faced lad like him, good steady worker, it seems, no record. Anyway, thanks for your help, Miss Clark. You and Mr Gilbie can go now.’

Nellie looked at him, bewildered. What did he mean? Surely Ted hadn’t been stupid enough to give a false name, and did he hate Sam so much he would try to set him up? Nellie was about to correct him, but just then, from an office opposite, emerged the familiar figure of Sam Gilbie.

‘Sam!’ His eyes met hers and with an almost imperceptible shake of his head she knew to say no more as he walked up to her and took her hand.

‘You’re free to go, Mr Gilbie,’ said the detective. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience, but we have to follow every lead.’

Sam nodded and said it was no trouble and he was pleased to have been a help. He still held fast to Nellie’s hands and she could feel him trembling. They made a show of walking slowly out together and down the station steps.

‘Let’s walk over the other side,’ Sam said as they got free of the station. He led her towards Tower Bridge and they walked northward across it, towards the Tower of London, not stopping until the full width of the Thames was between them and Tower Bridge Police Station.

13

To the Tower

They descended an icy flight of stone steps beside the bridge, Sam holding her arm as he led her to the embankment in front of the Tower. A row of pitted old black cannons, each capped with a mound of snow, stood sentinel before the silent walls of London’s old fortress. A Beefeater stood with a pike by a little drawbridge, his scarlet coat bright against the carpet of snow. Nellie wondered why they called it the White Tower, when it was black with soot and grime: the only white she could see was in the snowdrifts, blocking crenellations and arrow slits. They said nothing until they reached Traitor’s Gate, a desiccated reminder of all the ghostly prisoners who had passed beneath its portcullis. Nellie shivered and turned back to the wide open Thames, where a pewter sky rested heavily on its slate-grey waters. She walked to the railing and gazed up at the bridge, as its arms rose to let a red-sailed Thames barge pass beneath, on its way downriver.

‘It’s a wonderful sight.’ Sam spoke her thoughts. He leaned his elbows on the railing and they watched in silence as the arms descended again.

Finally, she spoke. ‘Sam, why did you give me as your alibi, why didn’t you just tell them you were at home?’

She turned to look at him. His face was grey and strained. ‘Because I wasn’t
at
home.’

‘You weren’t? Well, wherever you were, surely someone saw you?’

‘No, nobody saw me, Nell. I didn’t
have
an alibi, you see.’

Nellie’s mouth went dry and she felt the silence of snow all around them, like a heavy presence. She tried to quell the horrible suspicion that Sam could be involved in the whole thing too. Had he just been playing a charade with Ted that night? Wasn’t there anyone she could trust?

‘Well, where were you, then?’

‘Mum’s bad again, and I needed to get out. It upsets me sometimes, Nell, to see her like that. So I reckon, at the time Ted was blowing himself up, I was in the stable working on the old penny-farthing and the only witnesses were old Thumper and his mates.’

Nellie realized she hadn’t been breathing. She took in a gulp of the freezing air, surprised at her own relief. When had it started to become important to her, this feeling that she could trust Sam, that he was like a solid hub in all the turning world? But she wouldn’t reveal a feeling to him that was still so new to her. ‘Well, why didn’t you just tell them that, you stupid sod?’ she snapped. ‘And what if my story had been different? They would have put you down as a suspect straight away!’

‘I suppose I panicked. I wasn’t entirely innocent, remember. I helped Bosher, we both did, and that made me think you could do with an alibi as well…’

Nellie hadn’t thought of that.

‘But anyway, knowing you, I guessed you’d be clever enough to tell them as near the truth as you could. I remembered you were going to walk in the park and then go to the Star, so I told the same story and made out I was your sweetheart.’

Sam swallowed the last word and she saw his familiar blush rising, but now, instead of scorning it, she felt an urge to cup his burning face with her cold hands. She resisted and said instead, ‘You’re a kind-hearted fool, Sam Gilbie, and I don’t think I’ve deserved your friendship. Thank you.’

‘I’ll always be a friend to you, Nellie,’ he said quietly, and before she could reply he went on, ‘and don’t think I mean more than that, will you? I’d hate to think we couldn’t be friends.’

Their shared jeopardy seemed to have broken down a barrier between them and loosened Sam’s tongue. ‘And another thing, Nellie, that night you came home with me, remember?’

‘Of course I remember.’

‘I know Mum got the wrong end of the stick about us, and you’re to take no notice of anything she said… or might have made
you
say… D’ye get me drift?’

This was even more of a shock. How much did Sam see, how could he know about her promise? He’d said ‘knowing you as I do’ – how did he know her? And how did he see what she felt? For all the time she had spent with Ted, she never once felt that he
knew
her; it was all about what she felt for
him
, nothing more, she realized that now. She sighed.

‘I get your drift, Sam, but that’s something between me and your mum.’

He stared hard at her and seemed to decide not to pursue it. ‘Come on, you’re perishing. Let’s keep walking,’ he said finally.

They walked briskly along the river front, passing a few other well-wrapped Londoners, heads down, immune to the glories of history surrounding them – a couple of delivery boys trundling handcarts along the cobbles; a noisy group of sailors coming from St Katherine’s Dock, no doubt in search of the nearest pub. The normal hordes of Baedeker-carrying tourists were absent, though, and they skirted the Tower largely undisturbed. A few late white roses were blooming at the foot of the curtain wall, drooping under their extra petals of snow.

‘Who do you think spotted you at the arches?’ Nellie said, as they paused at Tower Pier to watch a paddle steamer swing out into the tugging tide, steam pluming from its white funnel.

‘They said it was an anonymous tip-off.’ He frowned. ‘But I don’t know how anyone saw me – there was no one about and I was careful when I moved Ted. Have you heard from him?’

Nellie shook her head. ‘No, but Lily says he made it up north and they’re telling everyone he’s been up there a fortnight. He’s trying for a job on the boats, getting out of the country.’

‘Good riddance an’ all! If he’s out of the way, the coppers won’t be coming after you, will they?’

Nellie felt a pang of disloyalty to Ted, in spite of his silence and apparent abandonment of her. Sam must have seen it in her face. He took her elbow, guiding her back towards the moat.

‘Sorry, Nell, it’s just I don’t think he’s been good to you, that’s all.’

‘No, he hasn’t been good to me, Sam, but I made my choices, didn’t I? So you could say I haven’t been good to myself.’

They had made an almost full circuit of the Tower and were now heading towards Tower Hill. The moat and front drawbridge fell into view and, with the gas lamps beginning to be lit, the castle took on a sparkling fairy-tale look, their light flaring off icicles dripping from the battlements. By now she was shivering. They stopped at a tea stall and Sam ordered two glasses of steaming-hot sarsaparilla. On a bench nearby Nellie spotted what looked like a huddled bundle of rags. As she stared, the bundle moved and a haggard white face peered out from under a worn docker’s cap. The old man was gazing at her drink.