The Darkest Hour (12 page)

“Both of ’em nearly took my block off.”

Rossett glanced across, and, in the half-light, he could see the mess he’d made of the other man’s nose. He shook his head.

“You should get something cold on that.”

The docker touched it again, like it was an unexploded bomb, and then smiled at Rossett.

“Jim Parker.” He held out his bloody hand.

“Rossett.”

They shook, and Parker touched the lump on his forehead.

“You knocked me out cold there, Mr. Rossett. I went down like a sack of spuds.”

“Rossett will do.”

“Don’t you have a first name?”

“We can stop for ice if you want?”

Parker glanced at Rossett.

“I’ll be all right, I reckon. Bit of swelling will teach me a lesson.”

“I’m sorry about knocking your pint. I overreacted, it’s been a bad day.”

“It was me who overreacted. I shouldn’t have followed you out, after you said sorry.”

The two men nodded to each other, apologies accepted.

“Terrible night after a terrible day, eh?” Parker finally said.

“To be honest, I was drowning my sorrows in the pub. I didn’t want to go home.”

“Trouble with the missus?”

“No, work.”

“Looks like I did you a favor following you out then?”

Rossett smiled.

“You did take my mind off things.”

“You’re welcome, chum,” Parker replied, touching his nose and shaking his head, “although it would’ve been easier if you’d just told me. I would’ve just bought you a drink instead.”

Both men smiled as Rossett wiped the windshield with the back of his hand again. They turned south and crossed the river heading for Battersea, and Parker pointed occasionally, giving directions as they neared his home. Eventually, they pulled up in a terraced street filled with dimly lit back-to-back, two-up-two-down houses.

Rossett stopped outside Parker’s but didn’t kill the engine. He turned and offered his hand to shake.

“No hard feelings?”

“Already forgotten, but I’ll not shake your hand till we’ve had a drink together. Come inside and have a quick one before you go?”

“I can’t.”

“Come on, you said you didn’t want to go home yet. Just a quickie?”

Rossett glanced at the house and pondered for a moment.

“I’m half drunk as it is, I should really be—”

“Come on, cup of tea then. My missus will have laid out some dinner by now. Besides, I might need you; she’ll give me another hiding if I walk in like this. Come on, nice cup of tea?”

Rossett smiled and nodded.

“Just a cup of tea.”

Both men got out of the car, and Rossett waited by the front door as Parker made his way toward him. The big man still looked unsteady and had to rest his hand on the car’s hood as he stepped onto the curb.

“Stand by,” said Parker as he opened the front door, which led directly into the parlor of the tiny house.

Rossett felt the heat of the coal fire that was crackling in the hearth as soon as he entered. The room was tidy and furnished in a manner that many would have called old-fashioned, but that Rossett would have called homely. Two comfy but threadbare armchairs framed the fireplace, and the thin woolen rug that lay at their feet was the only carpeting in the room. The solitary lightbulb burned under an orange tasseled shade that gave off a glow almost as warming as the fire, and a fat lazy cat glanced up from a tiny two-seater settee with slow blinks and a wide yawn.

Rossett liked the room. It felt like one fit for a family, like a room that had sheltered a lot of love.

“Is that you, Jim?” a woman shouted from the kitchen. “You’re home early.”

Parker cast a glance at Rossett and rolled his eyes.

“I’ve brought a visitor, love.” Parker smiled at Rossett. “That’s my Queenie.”

Before he finished his sentence the woman appeared at the door that led to the kitchen. She was a similar age to Parker, maybe a few years younger. Her face wore the weight of a hard life, although it wasn’t a hard face. She smiled at Rossett before turning to Parker and gasping.

“Oh my lor’, Jim, what’s happened to your face?” She stepped forward and reached for her husband.

Rossett frowned and regretted agreeing to go into the house.

“A gang of geezers tried to have me off. Good job Rossett here was passing by, else they would have done.”

“What would they want with having you off?”

“Well, we had words, see. It wasn’t nothing. Mr. Rossett stepped in to help. We saw ’em off though, didn’t we?” Parker looked at Rossett for backup, and Rossett smiled thinly and nodded, aware, after being a copper for so long, that the best way to lie was not to say anything.

Queenie looked at Rossett, then her husband. Rossett knew immediately that she wasn’t as daft as her husband hoped. She gave the slightest of shakes of her head and then led Parker to one of the armchairs and pushed him down. He sat, fitting the armchair like a glove.

“I’m all right, girl, just a bruise or two, that’s all.”

Queenie prodded the lump on his head, and Parker yelped and put his hands up to cover it.

“At your age, Jim Parker, fighting in the street?” She looked across to Rossett and nodded to the other armchair. “Sit.”

Rossett found himself doing as he was told, and Parker smiled at him.

“I warned you.”

Rossett was beginning to like these people.

“I’VE ON
LY GOT A DROP OF
RABBIT STEW,
M
R.
R
OSSET
t,” Queenie called from the kitchen as Rossett balanced the teacup and saucer on his leg while holding a plate of biscuits in his other hand.

The fat cat was now sitting in front of him, back to the fire, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I really should be going.”

“Nonsense, you can stay for a bite. You were good enough to bring my Jim home, least I can do is feed you.”

Rossett looked around for somewhere to put the biscuits he’d been holding for the last five minutes without eating. He stood, stepped over the cat, and placed the plate down on a yellowing cotton tablecloth that half covered the dark brown wood.

On the table, next to some tired flowers, was a photo in a frame, of a young man in uniform. Rossett squinted at it, trying to make out the badge on the beret its subject was proudly wearing. He was holding the picture when Queenie walked in with some cutlery.

Rossett showed her the picture. “Your son?”

“My Arthur.”

Rossett knew from her tone that Arthur wouldn’t be joining them for supper that night, or any night ever again.

“The war?”

She nodded sadly, and Rossett put the picture back on the table carefully.

“Did you serve, Mr. Rossett?”

Rossett nodded without looking at her.

“Such a terrible waste.”

She put the cutlery on the table and left the room. Rossett returned to his seat, took a sip of tea, and stared at the cat, which stared back at him, blinking slowly again, as if it missed Arthur, too.

Rossett heard the clump of big feet coming down the stairs and looked to the kitchen door as Jim entered. He’d washed his face and changed his shirt, but the dirty purple bruises under his eyes were darkening by the minute.

“I should be getting along.”

“Don’t be daft, she’s warming that stew now. Here, have a tot.”

Jim bent down to a small cabinet and produced a bottle of brandy. He crossed the room in two steps and poured a drop in Rossett’s tea before Rossett had a chance to cover it.

“Nice for her to make a fuss every now and then.”

Rossett sighed and glanced to the door as Queenie entered with a breadboard and loaf. She placed it on the table, moving the picture of Arthur back a few inches to make way.

“Mr. Rossett was asking about our Arthur, Jim,” she said as she headed back out into the kitchen.

“My eldest.” Jim remained standing, holding the bottle like a wine waiter looking for a glass. “Joined up before the war, Royal Engineers. The bastards got him on the road back to the beach; he was trying to blow a bridge to slow them down.”

Rossett subconsciously moved his hand to his lapel, feeling for the swastika badge; it wasn’t there, lost in the fight.

“Terrible days” was all he could think of to say as he took another sip of tea.

“Were you over there?”

Rossett nodded.

“Did you make it out or were you captured with the others in France?”

“I made it out, for what it was worth. I finally got captured outside London after the surrender.”

The men looked at each other and paused in the way that everyone seemed to do since the war, unsure of what to say, unsure of where they stood, scared to criticize governments past or present for where it might lead.

They settled on a silent nod of understanding and left it there.

Queenie reentered and frowned when she saw the brandy.

“Didn’t take you long?”

“Come on, girl, we’ve got company!” Jim waggled the bottle at her. She smiled back and rolled her eyes at Rossett before turning and leaving Jim balancing the plates.

Rossett smiled. He liked these people an awful lot.

Chapter 17

T
HE MEAL WAS
excellent and Rossett was glad he’d stayed. It had been a long time since he’d eaten good home cooking and fresh-baked bread, and longer since he’d laughed at a table with people who loved each other and welcomed strangers in these troubled times.

The table was cleared, fire stoked, glasses filled, and he found himself having to worry only about keeping the cat that was sitting on his lap purring.

Rossett was contented for the first time in a long time.

Queenie came out of the kitchen and nudged her husband, who was sitting opposite Rossett staring into the fire.

“Mr. Rossett’s glass.”

Jim picked up the bottle from the floor near his feet and leaned across to pour, but this time Rossett was quicker and managed to move the glass just out of reach. The cat shifted slightly and flexed its claws as a reminder to him that it was comfortable and that if he moved again he would be sorry. Queenie drew one of the dining chairs up to the fire and sat between the two men, holding her own small drink on her knee.

In the corner of the room some band music was whispering out of the radio, and all three, plus the cat, listened to a song Rossett remembered as “Supposing,” by Jay Wilbur and His Orchestra.

He’d danced to it once with his wife in a parlor just like this, cheek to cheek, with just a crackling fire and a crackling radio for company. They’d made love that night and then lain in front of that fire, letting it warm their bodies as a storm lashed the windows outside and drowned out the wireless.

They’d stared at each other, not speaking, inches from each other’s face, looking into the depths of love as they stroked each other’s hair.

Two people as close as two people could be.

“It’s a beautiful song.” Queenie dragged Rossett back into the present. He glanced at her and she smiled sadly at him, as if she’d heard his memories out loud.

“I once danced to that song,” Rossett found himself saying.

“Happier times?”

“Happier times,” replied Rossett as he rested his hand on the cat’s head and stroked its cheek with his thumb. The cat shifted slightly and tilted its head to get the full effect.

“Do you have pets, Mr. Rossett?”

“No.”

“We got him to keep the mice down, not that he does. He spends all day staring at me and then all night sitting on Jim’s lap. I’d love to know what he is thinking.”

“He’ll be thinking how lucky he is to have ended up in this house with you two”—Rossett paused, then looked up from the cat to Queenie—“and he’s not the only one.”

Queenie smiled as they sat and listened to the dance band for a moment more. Rossett became aware that Jim was breathing deeply, and he looked across to see that the big man had closed his eyes and started to doze.

“It’s all the early mornings. He drops off every night.”

“I’d best be going.”

“It’s all right, I leave him there. He doesn’t sleep very well in bed anymore, tossing and turning and mumbling away.”

Rossett nodded and turned back to the fire.

“Do you sleep well, Mr. Rossett?”

Rossett turned back to Queenie, and the cat nudged his hand because he’d stopped stroking its cheek.

“No.”

“Did you lose her during the war? I could see her in your face during that song, so very sad.” Queenie stared at him, and he thought that she might cry, her own pain letting her know how much his hurt.

“After the war. It was a bomb, her and my son.”

Queenie didn’t speak; she left it up to Rossett to carry on if he wished. Eventually, he looked up from the cat and stared into her eyes.

“I was still in the camp, prisoner of war. I’d just started to get her letters through as everything settled down. A bundle arrived one day, and I sat and read them all at once. She’d been writing and writing. She didn’t even know where I was and she just kept sending them to the High Command.”

“She found you.”

“Just as I lost her.”

“One day I had her in my hands, my son had scribbled some lines, I could smell her on the paper, feel her fingers holding the sheets I was holding. I had a picture of my son and her, and I felt . . . I felt . . .” Rossett tilted his head, confused by his own words; he knew what he wanted to say but couldn’t say it.

“You were falling in love again?”

“I hadn’t fallen out of love. I still haven’t.”

Queenie touched his arm and Rossett turned back to the fire. His eyes felt heavy. He looked at his glass and then squeezed the bridge of his nose with his free hand, damming the weight that was building up behind his eyes.

“We’ve all lost so much,” Queenie said, as much to herself as to Rossett. “I wonder when it’ll start to get better, when we’ll start to get things back. All of this . . . it all seems so pointless.”

Rossett nodded.

“The priest told me, ‘You just have to keep going, it’s a sin to give up,’ ” Rossett said, his voice reedy now, emotion building.

“Is that why you stayed in the police?”

“I needed to do something. I . . . I couldn’t be on my own.”

Queenie touched his arm again, and this time left her hand resting on it.

“That’s why I’m glad I had my Jim. I couldn’t have coped on my own. You shouldn’t be alone, you need someone. Would you find another lady?”

Rossett thought about Mrs. Ward, his landlady, and what Koehler had said about taking her to the beach. For the most fleeting of moments he considered a future with someone else before silently shaking his head.

“So you’ll stay on your own forever?”

Rossett nodded.

“Oh, Mr. Rossett, that’s such a waste.”

Rossett turned to Queenie, opened his mouth to speak, and then stopped. He tilted his head, and suddenly silent tears ran down his cheeks like the first rains of autumn.

“I’m damaged, Queenie,” he said softly, “broken, inside . . . I’ve done such terrible things . . . caused so much pain . . . I’ve killed so many people, I could never . . . I can’t ever . . .”

Queenie held his hand, and Rossett looked back to the fire, wondering why the tears came so easily and so often.

“Mr. Rossett, you’re not a bad man, I can tell that. You could never be,” she whispered urgently.

Rossett couldn’t bring himself to look into her face and instead looked down at her hand; paper-thin skin barely hid the blood that ran through her veins, her swollen knuckles smooth and white as they gripped onto him for all they were worth with a thin gold ring that hung on her finger like a band on a pigeon’s leg.

“You’re a good man,” Queenie said again, as if she needed to hear it herself once more for confirmation.

He took a deep breath.

“Today I sent a little boy to a place where he could die, a little boy who hadn’t done anyone any harm. A child, just like my own, a child who trusted me, needed me . . . and I gave him to people who would sooner stroke your cat than give that little boy water. I do that every day. Like a boiler man, I shovel them into hell like they are coal. I do that every day, because if I stop . . . if I think about it, about what I am doing and where I am, I want to blow my head off to escape the misery of what I’ve become.”

They sat in silence, Queenie still holding his hand and Rossett still holding the cat until he spoke again.

“I’m falling, Queenie. I’m falling and no one can save me.”

“Oh, my love, there is always someone, there is always someone who can pull you back. You just need to find that person. It’s like you meeting Jim. You don’t know what’s around the corner. There will be someone to save you. You just haven’t met them yet.”

“There is no way back. I’m soaked in blood and it’ll never wash off.” Rossett twisted in his seat, and the cat flexed its claws again and lifted its head as he picked up his glass and finished his drink in one angry gulp.

“Things will change. You will change. You just need to find a reason.”

“I’ve already changed. I’m a monster.” Rossett could feel self-pity evolving into anger. He’d felt it before.

“I couldn’t save my boy, I’ve had to accept it, Mr. Rossett, and you have to accept that you couldn’t save your family; they’re gone. You need to move forward, save someone else with your love, save yourself with your love. You’ve still got it in you.”

The fire in the hearth crackled. Rossett stared deep into it as Queenie spoke, and something stirred, something good.