After the Mourning (17 page)

The old man shrugged.

‘Arthur and Walter have laid Alfie out ready for you, Francis,’ the Duchess said.

‘Thank you.’

So now I had two bodies to prepare for the grave – one a young girl barely into adulthood and the other a friend and sometime employee. Alfie Rosen had done a few good turns bearing for me alongside Arthur and Walter. I would miss him, but more than that I would miss the light he had put into Doris’s eyes when she married him. You see so many young widows now – girls with downcast faces and dead eyes. I tried not to imagine how she would do without him.

As I went through to the back of the shop to see Alfie Rosen, I saw my cousin Stella cleaning the stair banisters with beeswax polish, humming cheerily to herself. Young Charlie Lee, who was at the bottom of the stairs, was staring at her with ill-disguised confusion. But Stella was the very image of a complete basket case. God knows, I understand what that’s like, but suddenly I snapped.

‘Stella, you know that Doris’s husband has died, don’t you?’

She gazed at me with vacant eyes and smiled. ‘Yes, but the Virgin will make sure he’s safe, Francis,’ she said. ‘The Virgin will bring Dad back to me eventually.’

I lost my temper. ‘Christ Almighty, Stella,’ I said, ‘the girl that “saw” the Virgin is lying out the back here awaiting burial, and Uncle Percy is not coming back here or anywhere else. He’s dead!’

There was a tiny pause and then it was as if all the magic and stories that had sustained her blew off Stella’s face and out of her mind all at once. ‘Francis!’ she screamed. ‘No!’

‘He’s dead, you’re an orphan, and God, the Virgin and all the saints are off on a beano to somewhere the other side of heaven!’ I stretched up towards her now weeping face. ‘Because they certainly aren’t here, are they? Because this is hell and those types don’t come to where the devil is, do they?’

‘Oh, Francis!’ she wept. ‘Don’t talk like that! Please!’

I knew I was being cruel and part of me wanted to be. But poor Stella’s face and her ruined dreams threatened to make me hate myself so I pushed past Charlie Lee and went out the back to Alfie. Already in the tailcoat and stiff white shirt he had been married in, Alfie Rosen lay in the coffin the boys had found for him, as if he was asleep.

I sat down beside him as I had a hundred times before and lit a fag. I talked for some time, apologising for the loss of my wand and other nonsense, before I’d built up enough courage to take one of his ice-cold hands in mine and squeeze it, like a mate.

I’d asked Charlie Lee several times without success about what his parents intended for their Lily. I’d even telephoned Ernie Sutton to find out if he knew anything, but he was as clueless as I was.

‘We can’t keep your sister here for ever, you know, Charlie,’ I said to the boy, after we’d all finished what had passed for our evening meal. Although Doris and Herschel Rosen had now been taken home by Rabbi Silverman, Hancocks was still a morbid and subdued place to be. Everyone had known and liked Alfie, and the knowledge that his dead body lay just one floor below our parlour was not comfortable. Nobody had so much as glanced at the chicken I’d got from Mrs Hinton, and that included me.

Charlie didn’t answer. My sister Aggie, however, who, it has to be admitted, is a sight more forceful than me, or most men come to that, said to the boy, ‘Are you listening to what my brother’s asking you?’

Charlie looked up into Aggie’s powdered and rouged face with undisguised dislike. ‘Yeah.’

‘Well, why don’t you answer him, then?’ Aggie said. ‘You can see what a hard time we’re having here. We’ve just lost a good pal.’

‘Agnes, the boy has lost his sister,’ the Duchess put in, as she placed a calming hand on Aggie’s shoulder.

‘Yes, I know, but—’ Aggie lit a fag, then sprang to her feet and agitatedly left the room. ‘To bloody hell with everything!’

We all heard her sobbing as she ran up to her room. But no one followed her. What she was doing was only natural. People you know die all the time in war – the butcher over the road, a cabbie my old dad used to talk to up on Green Street, some old girl who always got drunk in the Abbey Arms – and it isn’t pleasant. But when those close pass away, like Uncle Percy, like Alfie Rosen, it’s different. It hurts physically as well as in the mind. I don’t eat, but everybody’s different. As Aggie howled on, we all felt that extra bit depressed as the gas went down in the parlour when she put her light on up in her bedroom. But then the fact that we had any gas at all was, we all knew, a mercy. Ever since the shop windows had been boarded up, downstairs had only been bearable when we’d had gas. Otherwise we were forced to meet our customers and do our business by candlelight. Even for an undertaker who’s seen most things and believes in little, the shapes and shadows that candlelight can throw, particularly in a dusty old place like this, can be unnerving at best. Now, however, as darkness had fallen some hours ago, we were all occupied with waiting for the sirens. Alfie was dead and it hurt, but there was still that feeling of moving on that one gets after a close death these days. An uncle or cousin lies dead, but your ears still strain for the wail that tells you to get down to the shelter or run for your life. And you do.

But it wasn’t the sirens that broke the silence that hung over my family, Charlie and me that evening. It was the shop doorbell.

‘Who’s that?’ Nan said, as she always does when people call after hours.

‘Perhaps it’s the fire-watchers,’ the Duchess said. ‘Mr Deeks from the bank and his boys.’

Nan put her knitting on the floor and stood up. ‘Well, what would they want?’

‘It’s a cold night and they’ll be out there for hours,’ the Duchess said. ‘Maybe some tea or blankets . . .’

‘Yes, but they bring things with them and that and—’

‘Well, if you don’t go to the door, we’ll never know, will we?’ I said, through gritted teeth. Like a lot of East-End women, particularly those of middle age and beyond, Nan can’t half go on about nothing sometimes. She glared at me before she went downstairs.

A moment later, Charlie said, ‘I’d best get down and be with our Lily.’

‘You know that when a raid’s on I’m going to make you go down into our Anderson,’ I said. ‘No arguments.’

‘Mum said she stayed with Rosie when she was here and German planes come.’

‘Your mum’s a grown-up. She can do what she likes,’ I replied.

The Duchess looked at me at crossly. She’s always hated the way I won’t go down the shelter with the rest of them. But she was never in a trench with ten tons of mud above her head, threatening to bury her alive at any second. It’s not a thing I can tell her too much about either.

I set about to change the subject back to my original conversation with the boy. ‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘about Lily . . .’

I was interrupted by the thunderous sound of many boots running up our stairs. Charlie, alarmed, cast his eyes around the room as if searching for a way out. But there is only one door into our parlour so when Captain Mansard and two of his Military Policemen stood in it they cut off this exit to all of us.

‘Where are your parents, Charlie?’ the captain said to the boy, without so much as a word to me or my mother. ‘Where’s Edward?’

‘At the camp,’ the boy said.

‘No, they’re not!’

Charlie shrugged.

‘Your parents, Edward whatever-his-name-is and your brothers are nowhere to be found,’ Mansard said. ‘Your sisters are not exactly forthcoming and Bruno the bear appears to have been given to some old man with a wooden leg. What’s going on?’

‘Maybe Dad’s gone on the
drom
again,’ Charlie replied. ‘I don’t know.’

‘On the
drom
? What nonsense is that?’ Captain Mansard reached down towards the boy and said, ‘You’re coming with us.’

‘
Drom
means on the road,’ Charlie said, as he tried to pull Mansard’s hand away from his neckerchief. ‘Ow!’

‘Er,’ I said, ‘Captain Mansard, aren’t you supposed to be guarding the Gypsy camp? Aren’t you telling people that Lily’s body is there? If they find out it’s here . . .’

‘The adult Lees have left the campsite,’ the captain said, with what seemed to me a lot of anger in his voice. ‘The other Gyppos are still there but the Lees have gone.’

‘Well, I’m sure they’ll be back because of Lily,’ I said. At the same time I tried to catch Charlie’s eye but found I couldn’t. That Betty had left her daughter down at the mortuary had been strange, I’d thought at the time. Now I was inclined to think that Charlie might know why that was. However, why any of it was important to the MPs was beyond me – unless, of course, Mansard was still intent on clearing Sergeant Williams’s name.

‘Captain Mansard,’ I said, ‘why are you so worried about the Lees?’

His eyes blazed. ‘Why, Hancock, are you asking that question?’

‘Well . . .’

He moved in close to me, an action that caused the Duchess to walk over to my side.

‘Our main job up in the forest is to find deserters and those foreigners attempting to avoid internment,’ he said. ‘With regard to the latter, we discovered a couple called Feldman some days ago, but there is still one German missing.’

The Gypsy, Martin Stojka.

‘And because this “person” is one of their kind, we understand that some native Gypsies might be helping him,’ he continued. ‘The Lees have been in my sights for some time.’

‘But you haven’t found this person with them?’ I said.

‘No. But my fear is that they have used the tragedy involving their daughter to cover up this individual’s escape.’ He leaned forward. ‘Williams didn’t kill that girl. They did, the family, that brother-in-law . . .’

‘That’s nonsense! Why would the Lees kill their own daughter?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said hysterically. ‘They’re Gypsies – who knows?’

‘But Dr Craig has said—’

‘Williams was set up by the Gypsies!’ Mansard stared down, wild-eyed, at a very frightened Charlie. ‘You’re coming with me,’ he said. ‘You’re going to tell me where your family and Stojka are or I swear—’

‘He’s only a boy!’ the Duchess cried, roused to anger.

‘He’s a filthy Gypsy, is what he is!’ Mansard said, as he roughly grabbed one of Charlie’s wrists.

‘Oi!’ I put my hand across Mansard’s, an action greeted by one of his blokes aiming a revolver at my head.

‘Hancock, this is a matter of national security,’ Mansard hissed, as he pulled the boy towards him.

‘Mr Hancock!’ Charlie cried.

I tried to keep a hold on the lad but Mansard wrenched him out of my grasp.

‘Where are you taking him?’ I asked, as I watched the boy being dragged towards the door.

‘Mr Hancock, come with me!’ Charlie pleaded. ‘Let Mr Hancock come with me!’

‘Christ Almighty, boy, I’m only taking you back to your camp!’ Mansard told him.

‘Well, let me go with him, then,’ I said. The captain obviously thought that Charlie had information about the whereabouts of his family and possibly this Martin Stojka too. I was afraid he wouldn’t be too careful about how he got to it. ‘Captain Mansard?’

He turned back to me with cold, hard eyes. ‘This is not a job for a civilian,’ he said. ‘And we don’t need an undertaker – at least, not yet.’

As the MPs propelled Charlie towards the top of the stairs, he caught hold of Nan’s apron. ‘Miss Hancock, please!’

Nan, who hadn’t been comfortable with what she had seen so far, now reacted to the fear in the boy’s eyes. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘he’s only a kid. Could be a raid any minute! Where’s your Christian hearts?’

Captain Mansard pushed the boy away from her and said, ‘Probably quite near my Christian lungs.’ And then he raised his cap briefly to my sister while his men picked up Charlie and carried him down the stairs.

The last thing I heard the child say was, ‘Mr Hancock, don’t let our Lily be alone, will you?’

Even before I heard the front door of the shop close behind them I was chastising myself for not having done more to protect the child. Whether or not Mansard was right about the Lees shielding Stojka was immaterial. Charlie was too young to be guilty of anything beyond doing what adults wanted him to do. And although I knew that what Mansard was up to had a point, and was probably quite right, I was worried about the methods he might use. He obviously didn’t like the ‘Gyppos’ and would not, I felt, be anything like gentle with young Charlie or any of the other Romanies the Lees had left behind to go God alone knew where.

But within seconds the sirens went, and other considerations took hold. Stuttering, as I do when a raid is on, I picked up and took my mother down to the Anderson in the yard. Closely followed by Nan, we both called to Aggie, whom we still couldn’t hear moving about up in her bedroom.

‘A-A-Ag,’ I shouted. ‘C-c-c-come . . .’

‘Agnes!’ Nan yelled. ‘Get here!’

Our feet made a thundering noise as we pounded down the stairs, followed after a while by Aggie, muttering, ‘All right, I’m coming, keep your bloody hair on!’

Once all three, plus Stella, who had been brooding in the shelter ever since I’d shouted at her earlier, were settled and I’d satisfied myself that the horses were securely tethered in the stable, I went back into the shop as the first set of explosions lit up the sky above the Royal Docks. All the treasures of the Empire, it is said, are in those warehouses around those vast bodies of water. I thought of them on fire – of great hands of bananas, enormous sacks of sugar and grain, and of the rats that fed on all that, cracking and screaming and disappearing for ever into the mouth of the flames. It made me want to run. Oh, God, did it make me want to run!

But I didn’t. I went into the room at the back of the shop where Alfie Rosen was now hidden inside his coffin and where Lily Lee still lay uncovered. There I, a
gaujo
and really not worthy, had a go at batting back the bad spirits from Lily for Charlie. But the dark shapes I saw in the corners of the room were familiar rather than the exotic things I imagined the Romanies had. They were the endless screams of men whose heads flew off as soon as they put them over the tops of the trenches, they were horses’ legs cracking under the weight of the Flanders mud like twigs. They were things that were devilish because they were so horribly human.