We Five (34 page)

Lyle nodded. Then with a nod in Carrie's direction, he said, “Whilst I talk to this one here.”

“Why didn't you just say you wanted me out of the way so you could have a chin-wag with Carrie? And maybe whilst you're wagging, you could do it in the Anderson shelter.” At that moment the All Clear sounded. Jane laughed. “Or right here in my bedroom would be lovely too.”

Jane got up from the bed.

“I've got two eggs. I didn't tell you because I was saving them for a special occasion. You deserve those eggs for your decision to enlist. I'm very proud of you.” Jane delivered a kiss to her brother's forehead before leaving the room.

Lyle sat down on the bed facing Carrie. He waited until the sound of Jane's retreating footsteps died away. Then he said, “Do you know where he is? The bleeding bugger what did that to her?”

“You mean where he lives? No, Lyle. I don't. What are you thinking about doing?”

“He's a fire watcher with the A.F.S, ain't he? At night, I mean. And then in the daytime I've clocked him delivering coal for Mr. Matthews.”

“
What are you going to do, Lyle
?”

“What do you fancy I'm going to do?”

“Be in for the high jump would be my guess. They'll either hang you straightaway or you'll end up spending the rest of your life in prison.”

Lyle thought about this for a moment. “What difference does it make?”

“I thought you were joining the army.”

“I
am.
If the police don't nick me. And maybe they won't, because I intend to do this smart—not leave behind any trace it was me.
And
I'll be cold sober. That was Osborne's problem. He went after that stupid little sod whilst his head was only halfway screwed on.”

“Sober or drunk, Lyle, Molly's dad shouldn't have done
anything
to Pat.”

“Says yourself. I never held with any of them buggers—not from what Jane said about 'em. And then after what that Katz did to her—”

“Miss Colthurst at the factory—her family's been friends with the Matthewses going back years. She told me at the funeral this afternoon she was going to pay a visit to Mr. Matthews on her way back to the factory—tell him everything she knew about the three men he still had working for him. She thinks he'll give them the sack right on the spot.”

Lyle shook his head. “That ain't enough. There are jobs for conchies opening up everywhere. They'll just plant themselves someplace else and go right back in business. I know all about buggers like these. You see, I used to be one myself.”

“You never were, Lyle. Don't put yourself in their camp.”

Lyle looked away to avoid making eye contact with Carrie.

Carrie went on: “Mr. Matthews doesn't keep things to himself, Miss Colthurst says. Word will get around about what they did. People will find out about their game. They'll be forced to move away. And isn't that the best thing, Lyle? That they should be gone forever?”

“I still think the bleeder should be made to pay for what he did to my sister.”

Carrie got quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You've changed, Lyle. You didn't used to be this way.”

“You're right. I didn't used to be this way. I didn't used to care. Well, about Jane at any rate. Seeing her like that—
that way
—it, it changes things. You fancy my eggs? Poached on toast. You'll like the way Jane makes 'em.”

There was great tenderness in Carrie's smile. “Eat your poached, Lyle. We both want you to have them.”

Earlier that day, Vivien Colthurst had stood next to the table in the factory canteen where Maggie and Ruth sat sipping from their smoking cups of tea and not speaking. “I knew I shouldn't have brought the two of you in for the rest of the day shift. Your minds clearly aren't on your work.”

“I'm fine, I'm fine,” Maggie answered reflexively. Then she added, “Work helps. It keeps me from thinking too much about my missing mother, who went from being amusingly barmy to certifiably mental all in one week.”

Vivien grabbed a chair and sat down in it back-forward the way men sometimes do. “First, Maggie—your mother isn't mentally insane. She's
romantically
insane, like one of those Thomas Hardy heroines—like, like
Tess of the Dubers.
”

Ruth rolled her eyes. “For love of heaven, Vivien! Mrs. Barton isn't at all like a Thomas Hardy heroine. I wish for once you'd read a whole book and not just the jacket description. What was the second thing you were going to say?”

“That if Maggie can't concentrate on her work—that goes for you too, Ruth—there's going to be an accident. She might die.
You
might die. This being a munitions factory, dearies, we could
all
die. I wish I'd left the two of you back at the cemetery.” Ruth and Vivien rose together. “If you'd like to use my Riley to go back to the city, my three ride-alongs and I can manage with the seven-thirty bus.”

“You're very kind, as always,” said Ruth. “Perhaps we will. You're right. Maggie and I do have a lot on our minds right now.”

Vivien touched Ruth on the shoulder. “I know you'll make the right decision, love. About whether to join the A.T.S. And it will be
your
decision.”

“Yes, I know,” said Ruth, trying to smile. Through brimming eyes she added, “We—Cain and I—we were good friends, but we were just friends.”

The colour in Maggie's face had suddenly changed. It had nothing to do with the factory's mercury vapour lighting, which tended to make everyone look a little like the witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. There was a lighter cast to it. “I think I'm going to be sick,” she announced. “I think my bloody mother has turned my entire digestive tract into a warzone.”

“I'll fetch you a bromide, love,” said Vivien.

After Vivien Colthurst dashed off, Ruth sat down next to Maggie, who was staring with an empty gaze. “She said she hated me,” said Maggie.

“Who?”

“Molly. I remember her exact words: ‘I hate you so much right now, Maggie, I can't even see straight.'”

“She didn't mean it. I know she didn't.”

“What if something happens to her in Worcester and I don't get to tell her how sorry I am for provoking her?”

Ruth touched Maggie comfortingly. “Nothing will happen to her. She'll come back and you two will patch this thing up in no time. Good God, Maggie, you've had tizzes with every one of us at one time or another. They always blow over.”

Maggie nodded and tried to smile. “I don't
enjoy
being a bitch.”

“Of course you don't, pussy. Of course you don't.”

Mr. Matthews wasted no time in sacking all three men. He told them he had been fully informed about what they had been up to and he had no doubt that all this business had contributed to the ghastly deaths of the other two young men who'd been in his employ. “I don't want to see the bloody lot of you ever again. I thought you was all good lads. I find out instead that you're a bunch of sodding buggery reprobates who stick your bleeding pecker spanners in the works of everything you do. And I never held with your cack-handed way of delivering my coal neither—skimming and overcharging and keeping the difference for yourselves. Don't look at me that way. I've been on to you blighters for some time. I've been against this war since both my boys was killed, but I'd like to say something you'll never hear me say to another soul:
Go and bloody enlist.
Now get out of my sight.”

Holborne and Castle and Katz got out of Matthews' sight. First they went to Funland, which wasn't far from Matthews' warehouse, where they played the noisy pin-tables and a couple of games of Radio Billiards. Hardly a word was exchanged in the hour they were there, as if each needed some private time to recover from the shock of what had just happened. Even after Holborne lost half a bob trying to scoop up a cigarette case he fancied with the electric crane, and gave up, muttering to himself that the game was rigged, not a word was said in either agreement or commiseration.

However, they more than made up for their reticence once they reached the Fatted Pig.

Though its publican, Mr. Andrews, looked at them suspiciously when they showed up at a time when they should have been busy making deliveries for Matthews, he served them beer nonetheless and took their money.

“I wager it was Pardlow,” said Will. “He told Ruth and then
she
told Matthews.”

“Blooming pity we can't ask him,” said Tom. “The poofter's gone and made that just a little difficult.”

“Or it could have been Ruth it came from,” suggested Will. “She told somebody else and
they
told Matthews.”

“All I know is that
someone's
going to pay,” grumbled Tom.

“Cor!” cried Jerry Castle, tipping backward on two legs of his chair. “Will you give a listen to yourselves? Cain and Pat are dead—
dead.
We just had our jobs terminated by that human tin of stinking pilchards, who only hired us in the first place because we were happy to sit the war out on our arses—this whole escapade one bloody disaster—and then the two of you
still
refusing to surrender the football and exeunt the bloody field.
I'm
exeunting the field, lads. I'm joining the army and kill me some sons-of-Huns. But first I'm going to the one I wronged and set things to rights, so I don't have
that
on my conscience.”

“You have a conscience, Castle?” laughed Katz. “What'd you do? Dig one out of the shilling bin at Woolworths?”

“You're right. I've got no conscience. I never
had
a conscience. My kind is expendable, gentlemen. But here's the difference between me and the two of you: I
know
I'm a worthless placeholder in this world gone crackers. The two of you—you're both too daft or just too full-blooming deranged to see it in yourselves.”

Will made as if to push Jerry backward, toppling him to the floor, but Jerry quickly righted himself. “So
they
win,” said Will with a sardonic smile.

“The girls? Okay, they win. Ask me if I care a rap one way or another.”

“Pat is dead,” pressed Tom. “And that girl's father killed him.”

“I'm not like Cain,” said Jerry. “I never fancied putting a wig on the lad and taking him for a twirl round the dance floor at the Palais. In fact, if you want the truth, I always found Pat to be a bloody nuisance and Cain a sexual miscreant, and I know you won't deny it, Holborne, because you once saw the man in action. Why else did he always turn pansy yellow every time you went at him? I don't care to avenge
anyone's
death. I just want to break up this miserable little society of ours and let each of us go our bloody way.”

Jerry got up.

“Where are you going?” asked Katz.

“If I'm lucky, someplace I can avoid the two of you whilst waiting to go wynken and blynken with the eternal poppies.”

Jerry drifted out of the pub.

Will looked at Tom and Tom looked at Will with reflective gazes that revealed nothing. Then Will turned to the bar. His eyes clapped on the large ceramic pig sitting on the top shelf and looking very much like an oversized piggy bank. The pig's expression matched that of the pig on the sign which swung over the door to the tavern—self-pleased, blissfully unaware that he might at a moment's notice be converted into a tasty loin of pork or piping hot pork pie.

“She treated us like pigs,” said Will to himself, though his statement could not help being audited by his increasingly besotted and equally belligerent companion.

“Who?”

“Who what?”

“Who treated us like pigs?” asked Katz. “I thought they
all
did.”

“Ruth. The one who wouldn't have anything to do with us. I remember that sour look she gave me when Carrie and me were crooning like cats at the Palais.”

Katz laughed. “We
all
looked at you like you were dotty. You were making a bleeding disturbance.”

“She gave
you
that look too, Tom. She gave it to all of us. Like she was some bloody toff—
better
than the whole lot of us.”

Katz took a pull on his beer. “Maybe she is.”

“Bollocks.”

Will sank deeper and deeper into vengeful thoughts—thoughts of how he might right things in a very different way than that sought by his now foolishly forgiving former friend Jerry Castle.

Night and darkness came quickly. Maggie had been home for several hours and didn't quite know what to do with herself. She'd yet to hear anything from her mother, but held to a shred of hope that some valuable piece of information might
somehow
find its way to her—perhaps from a go-between of some sort. With the mandatory blackout now drawing down upon both Maggie and all her fellow Londoners, she thought she might walk over to the Balham Underground station.

Maggie had got quite good at negotiating the streets in the darkness. Even though she generally took along her torch, it having been recently fitted with both new Number Eight batteries and a fresh globe, she rarely used it. Perhaps it was the carrots her mother, with typical wartime economy, had put into nearly every soup and casserole she served, or the fresh bilberries Maggie loved (berries which were keen for the eyesight and thought to give R.A.F. pilots the upper hand over their German adversaries).

Maggie had thought during her trip back into the city with Ruth that a very good place for a fugitive and his “gun moll”—as the Americans so colourfully put it (or at least those Americans who worked on the Warner Brothers gangster pictures)—to go “underground” was actually to
go
underground—that is, to lose themselves among the throngs of Londoners who queued up each night to shelter themselves from bombing raids by descending like Lewis Carroll's Alice into the city's deepest rabbit holes. Maggie could easily fancy her mother and the man who would have become her father, should things have transpired differently, spending long evenings in the Balham tube—and perhaps a good part of their days Underground, as well.