1951 - But a Short Time to Live (24 page)

He sat for a long time thinking about the past, and the future. The hands of the clock crawled on, reached six, crawled on again. At six-fifteen, the swing doors pushed open and Mooney came in.

"All right?" Harry asked in a low voice as Mooney joined him.

"Yes, it's all right. Had a little trouble about the price, but I beat him down. Here, stick this in your pocket. It's all in order. Don't look at it now."

Harry put the thick envelope in his pocket

"I can't thank you enough, Alf."

"Forget it, kid," Mooney said. "You better get off. I know you want to get back to her. Well, kid, I don't suppose we'll see each other again, but here's luck. And tell her luck from me too. Take care of yourself. If ever you want me in a hurry, you can always get me by ringing this number." He gave Harry a card. "That's a guy who looks after my post and takes messages for me. Don't trust him with anything hot. Just say you want to get into touch with me. He'll give you my address in case I've moved. All right?"

Harry took his hand and squeezed it.

"Thanks, Alf. We may meet again. I hope so."

"So long," Mooney said. "Keep your pecker up. I've been through tough times, but there're plenty of good ones too. Don't forget that."

Harry slapped him on the shoulder and then walked quickly across the bar and into the street. He felt strangely moved at parting with Mooney. Mooney was an odd stick, but whatever: else he was he was loyal.

Harry waved to a taxi and gave the Park Lane address. As soon as the cab was moving he took out the envelope, ripped it open and examined the ration books and identity cards. They were in order, and the names of Douglas and Helen Kent looked strange to him. There was also another envelope with a scrawl of writing on it. Frowning, Harry read the message:

I have Doris's twenty-five, and I'll see she has it. You better keep this little lot. I couldn't rest happy if I kept it and thought you were hard up. What a damned silly old sucker I'm developing into, aren't I? God bless. — Alf

Inside the envelope were twenty-five one pound notes.

chapter twenty-seven

F
our suitcases and a hatbox stood in the hall. Across the hatbox lay Clair's mink coat.

Harry closed the front door. All that luggage would want a bit of handling, he thought, pausing to try one of the suitcases. It was heavy. Well, it couldn't be helped. They would be stupid not to take as many of their clothes as they could. He had no idea how long it would be before they could buy new ones.

"Clair," he called. "Are you ready?"

He turned the handle of the sitting-room door and entered.

"Everything's fixed, darling. Mooney's been . . ." He broke off, staring.

Clair sat in a huddled heap in one of the armchairs. She was drunk. She looked up at Harry, her face empty, her eyes screwed up the way a short-sighted woman too vain to wear glasses screws up her eyes when she is trying to see something. Her hair was in disorder. The wine-coloured silk blouse she was wearing had a rip in one of the sleeves. One of her stockings had escaped from her suspender clips and had slipped down to her ankle.

It seemed to Harry as he stood before her that he was looking at a stranger. Into his mind, made vacant by shock, came a picture of the past. The memory of something that had happened to him built itself up in his mind the way a picture forms on a television screen. He saw the dark doorway and the old woman wrapped in newspapers sitting there, an empty bottle of gin clutched in a filthy hand, a ghastly smile of invitation on her drink-sodden face as she looked up at him. He heard again the croaking voice and her horrible suggestion. He could smell the drink and the dirt again. And he flinched now as he did then when he remembered the disgusting thing she had done.

"What's happened, Clair?" he asked.

Her face twitched; the muscles under her white, blotched skin moved the way water moves in the wind.

"I burned my hand," she said.

He looked at her hands. The fingers of her right hand were blistered and stained a deep yellow. He saw the cigarette between her fingers, glowing red against her flesh and burning another blister, and he was horrified to see she didn't notice nor appear to feel the burning ember.

"Drop it!" he said sharply, leaning forward and slapped at her hand, knocking the cigarette butt on to the floor. As he placed his foot on it he saw holes in the carpet, burned by cigarette ends where she had dropped them.

"What have you been doing? Oh, Clair, pull yourself together. We've got to go. Why have you been drinking like this? What's the matter?"

"I want you to give me a baby," she said, looking up at him, her face full of drunken cunning. "I've thought it all out. They won't touch me if you give me a baby."

"What are you talking about? Clair! Get hold of yourself! We've got to go. Don't you understand?"

"That's right, isn't it?" she said, leaning forward to peer at him. Her spirit ladened breath fanned his cheek. "It's got to be all right! I read somewhere they don't touch you if you're in the family way. You've got to do it, Harry. If you won't, I'll get someone who will."

He caught hold of her shoulders, dragged her to her feet and shook her.

"Stop talking nonsense!" he said angrily. "You don't know what you're saying."

She pushed him away with surprising strength.

"Oh yes, I do," she said, swaying unsteadily. "It's you who don't know what you're talking about. We're going to have a baby. At once! It's the only way out." Suddenly she began to cry and stumbled against him, clinging to him. "I'm so frightened," she moaned. "I don't know what I'm going to do. You must give me a baby, Harry. They don't hang a woman who's carrying a child."

Harry felt a cold prickle run up his spine. Had she gone mad? He caught hold of her arms, pushed her away and stared at her. The cold, bleak terror in her eyes turned him sick.

"What have you done?"

"He's in there. I — I don't know what made me do it He caught me packing. He said we'd never get away. I went into the kitchen and he followed me, sneering at me. There was a knife on the table. I caught hold of it . . ." She broke off, shuddering.

"What are you saying?" Harry said, his heart hammering against his side. "You're drunk. You're lying! . . ."

"You've got to give me a baby," she moaned, wringing her hands. "I don't want to die! Oh, Harry . . . Harry . . . what are we going to do?"

He went quickly into the kitchen, paused in the doorway and then took a slow step back.

Ben Whelan lay on the floor, his knees drawn up and his hands clenched. His dead empty eyes seemed to be watching a big bluebottle that walked stiff-legged across the ceiling.

chapter twenty-eight

M
r. and Mrs. Douglas Kent lived at 43 Fairfield Road in two rooms on the top floor of a shabby boarding house in the poorer district of Hastings.

Fairfield Road lay at the back of the Old Town, a narrow, twisting hill of a road of cobblestones and small, dirty grey houses. No. 43 was owned by Mrs. Jennifer Bates who had let lodgings for twenty years and prided herself there were no tricks of the trade she didn't know. Before he was knocked down and killed by one of the new Corporation trolley cars, her husband had made a fair living from a Punch and Judy show. He had been a jolly, red-faced man who had irritated his wife beyond endurance by refusing to quarrel with her. In spite of her continual bickering he left her five hundred pounds with which she bought 43 Fairfield Road.

To look at, Mrs. Bates was not very prepossessing. She was short and fat and bulged in unexpected places. Her face reminded you of a stale crumpet, for it was round and dough-like, and pitted with small— pox scars. She had small inquisitive eyes, and a tight thin mouth. Her hair appeared to be about to come down, but somehow managed to stay up, although there were times when long, grey strands did escape and bob up and down behind her as she walked. She had five lodgers. The Kents and three thin-faced, elderly men, who worked on the railway. These three had been friends for a long time. Any day of the week you could see them from the London trains as they repaired the track or leaned on their shovels to talk to each other in slow, heavy voices. They rose at five o'clock and went to bed at nine. Mrs. Bates seldom saw or heard them for they were gentle, kindly men who believed in making as little noise about the house as possible.

They had been lodging with Mrs. Bates for over ten years, and she had at last come to the conclusion that they were to be trusted as far as anyone could be trusted, and were just the kind of lodgers any landlady would be glad to have.

But she wasn't anything like so satisfied with the Kents. It was the girl who worried her. The young chap seemed harmless enough, but the girl was another kettle of fish. She was a hard piece if ever there was one! Harder even than Mrs. Bates, who prided herself on her hardness. Anyway, this girl always got the better of Mrs. Bates in any verbal exchange, and there had been quite a few.

Young Kent, usually pale and worried looking, was quick to pour oil on troubled waters. He seemed afraid of offending Mrs. Bates, and his fear did much to mollify her for she liked people to be afraid of her.

The trouble began when she discovered the girl was going to have a baby.

"Not in my house!" she said, pointing an accusing finger at the girl's thickening waist. "No children! Never "ad any, and I ain't starting now. You'll 'ave to 'op it when it comes, so make up your mind to it."

The girl had given a sneering little laugh.

"Yap about the chicken when it's hatched," she said, and slammed the door in Mrs. Bates's outraged face.

Well, that was a nice way to talk!

And then one day when the Kents were out, Mrs. Bates had gone into their rooms to satisfy herself they were keeping them clean, and had found three empty gin bottles under the sofa.

That started more trouble.

"No drinking in my house!" she stormed, shaking one of the empty bottles in their faces on their return. "Any more of this, and you'll have to go!"

"And what else don't you like? What else can't we do in this lousy hole?" the girl demanded, her face like granite. "Go and drown yourself, you fat old bitch!"

And that had taken all Kent's tact to smooth over, but he had done it, explaining in his quiet, anxious voice that his wife wasn't well and the coming baby worried her, and if Mrs. Bates would overlook the incident he would see it didn't happen again.

If it wasn't that he paid regularly and the lack of petrol was ruining the tripper trade, Mrs. Bates wouldn't have had them in her house after such language, but she didn't want to lose the forty-five shillings they paid for the rooms, so she allowed herself to be mollified.

Kent had a job at Mason's, the photographic equipment shop on the seafront. He did the developing and printing, spending hours in the dark room, coming home about seven, looking white and tired. Mrs. Bates had no idea how much he earned, but it couldn't have been much for he was very shabby and his shoes needed repairing and he looked half starved. The girl was better dressed. In fact, when she first came to No. 43 she had a fur coat that looked like mink. But that disappeared after a while, and Mrs. Bates suspected it had been pawned. But now the girl's figure was thickening she had to have a couple of new dresses, and they looked cheap enough, Mrs. Bates thought with a contemptuous sniff.

They were an odd couple. Neither of them had any friends. Although they had been in Hastings for over six months they always kept to themselves. No one ever called on them, and when they went out together they invariably went up the hill to the castle and never down to the town.

Kent had told Mrs. Bates they used to live in West Ham, London. He always wanted to live by the sea, he said, and when he saw Mason's advertisement he had jumped at the chance of working in Hastings. One of these days, he told her, they hoped to have a home of their own, and when he said that there came into his eyes such a look of wistful longing that Mrs. Bates was almost sorry for him.

If it hadn't been for the girl, Mrs. Bates would have been pleased to have had Kent stay with her. He was no trouble, but the girl was a slut: that was the only word for her. Sometimes Mrs. Bates would hear her slanging Kent, but as soon as she started raising her voice, he somehow persuaded her to quieten down, so, although Mrs. Bates hurried to the foot of the stairs to listen, she never heard what the quarrel was about.

They would have to go before the baby was born. Mrs. Bates told Kent he had better keep his eyes open for a place where squawling brats were tolerated. It'd be a job, she said, with relish. So he had better look sharp or they'd be homeless.

Kent said there was still three months before the baby was born, but he would begin looking immediately.

"Three months?" Mrs. Bates said and laughed. "Don't you believe it. I can tell by the look of her. It's coming before then. You mark my words. Them that drinks gin always 'as 'em quick. I know. Inside eight weeks: That's my guess and I 'aven't been wrong yet."

Mrs. Bates always remembered the afternoon the Kents arrived. She had been taking a bit of a rest in the kitchen with a cup of tea and the newspaper. She had been reading about the Park Lane murder: a real sensation if ever there was one.

A man wanted by the police had been found stabbed to death in the kitchen of a Park Lane luxury flat, belonging to a couple named Ricks. The woman, Clair Ricks, had been on the stage doing a pickpocket act and making as much as a hundred and fifty a week. The man, Harry Ricks, had a portrait studio in Grafton Street. Both of them had disappeared, and the police were anxious to find them, believing they could give them information that would lead to an arrest.

So far no trace of them had been found. Detective-Inspector Claud Parkins was in charge of the case. He said the murdered man, Ben Whelan, was believed to have been connected with a gang of pickpockets working in the West End, and he thought the motive of the murder had been blackmail.