All Fall Down (37 page)

Gertie collected her coat and sealed the envelope herself. ‘We'll post it on the way.'

‘Why, where are we going?' Meggie ran to catch her out in the windswept court.

‘I thought you wanted to see Richie Palmer?'

Meggie felt another jolt, a thud against her chest. She clutched her coat around her.

‘Come on then.' Gertie slid Meggie's letter into the postbox on the corner of Charing Cross Road. It was over.
You shall see your father!
The fairytale princess was in tears again. ‘Let's get it over and done with.'

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘This place is the Sally Army without the Bible thumping. They set it up last year, after the ARPs started turning the tramps out of the ordinary shelters. Too drunk and rowdy, I expect.' Gertie picked her way along the dirty pavement that ran down the side of Charing Cross railway station. She led Meggie past the massive arches designed to support the Hungerford Bridge on its route across the river to Waterloo on the south bank.

Meggie shrank into herself. It wasn't the raw wind, nor the rattle and roar of trains passing overhead. It was the shapes of men huddling in dank brick alcoves, or shuffling towards them, talking to nobody, or swearing at thin air. Yet she tried to keep her spirits up, for this longed-for meeting.

‘It's run by officers from the last war, out of the goodness of their hearts, I suppose.' Gertie knew her way around. She ignored the drunks and the madmen. ‘Don't give them none of your change,' she warned Meggie. ‘They'll only spend it on meths.'

‘Is this where he lives?' Meggie looked up and down the dark tunnel. Numbered arches led off to left and right, heavy traffic thundered along the main, cobbled route; trucks delivering to warehouses set up under the arches, buses loaded with grim-faced passengers.

‘If you can call it living.' Gertie prepared Meggie for even more of a shock than she might expect. ‘He was in a bad way when he last came up the Court.'

‘When was that?'

‘Last time he was sober enough to find it.' She glanced at Meggie. ‘A couple of weeks ago. Look, this ain't the place where they live.
It's where they come if there's an air raid, because no one else will have them. There are bunks for them to sleep on, and they can keep warm, that's about it. I've brought you here to get news of him, see? With a bit of luck we'll get enough sense out of someone to track him down in one of his usual haunts.' A drunken man in filthy rags stepped from the pavement into the road. ‘Then again . . .' Gertie frowned. She stopped outside arch number 176. ‘You're sure you want to go ahead?'

Meggie nodded. There was no going back, not now the letter was in the post. She'd paid a terrible price to see this man.

‘Come in. Welcome to the Hungerford Club.' Gertie walked ahead into the hostel for down-and-outs.

The Club reeked of institutions, disinfectant, boiled food and human odours scarcely kept at bay. An effort had been made, however. The high arched ceiling was painted cream, the tiered bunks, empty at present, were stacked with neatly folded grey blankets. Orderlies mopped out the urinals set apart from the dormitory area, others carried scrubbed metal urns from sink to tables in the canteen.

Soon a middle-aged man in a pin-striped suit approached. He introduced himself as Captain Wallace, made it clear that visitors were both unusual and unwelcome; especially smartly dressed women whose business was difficult to determine. His clipped ‘May I help?' held undertones of ‘Let's deal with this swiftly before it disrupts our routine.'

Gertie nodded back. She too wanted to be quick. We're looking for a man named Richie Palmer. I know he comes here.'

‘As you see, he's not here at present.' The veteran officer made a sweeping gesture towards the row upon row of empty bunks.

‘But you know this man?'

‘Not by name. But there's nothing unusual in that. The men who come here are drifters. We don't keep a record of who they are. That's not how we operate.'

‘Well, I've carted him along here myself often enough.' Gertie grew impatient with the man's stonewalling. ‘Or had him sent when the sirens went off. I should think you would know him.'

Meggie stood by, trying to control her growing sense of dismay. She pictured the types who inhabited the bunks; the noises, the rags, the despair.

‘Give me a description.' Wallace realized that Gertie wouldn't back down unless she got some information. However, in contrast, the girl was reluctant, almost overwhelmed. ‘Let me see if I can help,' he said more kindly.

As Gertie ran through Palmer's appearance; dark brown eyes, thick grey hair, over six feet tall, Meggie compared it with the Tottenham Court Road tramp who had first fired her imagination. Certain then that he was somehow familiar, that she knew him without knowing him, despite his hostility, she began to falter now. After all, there were many tall men with grey hair and brown eyes whose lives had crumbled during the Depression years, for whom the promise of houses and jobs from a grateful government after the First War had never materialized, and who slid into homelessness in the grip of memories too dreadful to be told. Meggie knew this for a fact, from Hettie's work with the Salvation Army, from the evidence of her own eyes as she rode the tubes and buses.

‘Over six feet tall?' The ex-officer picked this up as unusual. ‘Broad frame? Silent type?' There was such a man who was a regular here, intent on drinking himself to death.

‘Richie don't say much,' Gertie agreed.

‘Do you look after him?'

‘On and off. What can I do? I can't turn my back on him if he turns up on my doorstep, can I?' She explained that she ran a pub off Shaftesbury Avenue, that Richie sometimes used Bernhardt Court as his pitch for begging coppers from theatregoers.

Wallace glanced at Meggie, wondering how she fitted in.

‘She wants to talk to Palmer, that's all,' Gertie said quickly. ‘Ain't no harm in that, is there?'

‘Are you lending a hand as well?' Suspicions lingered about Gertie's motives, but Wallace evidently decided that neither she nor Meggie looked official enough to cause problems. ‘Look, if I've got the right man, he is a regular here. Bunk number 85. But we're not open to visitors.' He lowered his voice. ‘To tell you the honest
truth, it isn't a fit place for you to be when the bunks are occupied. I wouldn't let my wife or daughter within a mile of the place, nor any decent woman. I'm sorry, but it's best to be frank.'

Gertie too was clear about not wanting to spend an air raid cooped up with a load of down-and-outs. ‘I'd rather take my chances out there with Butler's bombs,' she confessed. ‘But you're my starting point, Captain Wallace. Between us, we should be able to pin down Richie Palmer for Meggie here to talk to.' She glanced at her watch. Opening time beckoned her back to the Court, but it was important to satisfy Meggie's curiosity. Without Richie, her deal with Meggie was incomplete.

The ex-army man knitted his brows. ‘Wait. There's a possibility . . . yes, let me go and make enquiries.'

While he vanished into a small office and leafed through a ledger on the desk, Meggie stood numb with misery. The prospect of meeting up with her father at last now held no joy, not in a place like the Hungerford Club. She'd imagined at least that he might still be able to fend for himself, not rely on someone else being there to scoop him up with the very dregs of society.

Captain Wallace returned. He fingered his moustache as if still in doubt. ‘I was right; we have Palmer down as being in need of medical aid. We keep a register of men receiving treatment from Dr Munroe in the clinic here. He's on the current list.'

Gertie nodded briskly. ‘That's a start.'

‘What's wrong with him?' Meggie spoke up for the first time.

‘There's no record of that; only of medical requirements. Palmer needed a course of penicillin. That's all I know. However, I could take you next door. Dr Munroe will have the details.'

He ushered them across the dormitory, under the curious gaze of the orderlies, through a door into the next archway, where the space was partitioned into smaller rooms with doors marked Pharmacy, Bathhouse, Sickbay in stencilled letters. Here in an office, an introduction was made to a portly man wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and a white coat. Wallace explained their errand, and before they knew it, the doctor had confirmed that Richie Palmer was indeed on his fist of patients. The man had a bad bronchial
infection and had been kept in overnight. He was at this very minute in isolation in the small sickbay beyond the pharmacy.

Meggie's pulse started to race. From being stalled by the captain only five minutes before, she was on the brink of coming face to face with the man she'd built so many childhood dreams around. It was strange then how earth-bound she felt. She noticed the doctor's scrubbed hands, the white crescents at the tip of each fingernail, the shininess of his bald scalp.

Dr Munroe looked up sharply from behind his desk. What did they want with his patient?

Meggie heard Gertie launch into another explanation; it wasn't her but Meggie who had an interest in Palmer. She offered to wait outside with the captain if the doctor would be kind enough to take Meggie through.

Yes, but what was the girl's business with the sick man?

For the first time Gertie hesitated. ‘She can tell you that herself.' She nudged Meggie out of her daze.

Meggie took a deep breath. Falteringly she gave her name, explained her family circumstances, the tangled thread that had led her to the Hungerford Club. ‘I'd like to see him, please. You see, I'm Richie Palmer's daughter.'

Richie Palmer sat in a chair in the sickbay at the Hungerford Club. The pain in his chest, the rattle of phlegm in his throat had kept him awake all through the night, though for him the days, and nights merged, and life had lost all sense of shape and direction. He was washed up, finished. A lung infection on top of a bad liver, a weak heart. What did it matter? He would lay up for a couple of days here at the Club under a haze of sedatives, then drift again, drink again if he could beg the coppers, or summon the energy to look up one of his few remaining acquaintances.

He hadn't always been so low. There had been times when he'd held down a job for a few months, until he'd shown up at work with a hangover once too often and been given his marching orders again. There had been women, even in these last few years, whenever he made the effort to smarten up. Somehow he remained attractive
to them. They didn't mind his surliness and his silences, since he had a masculinity that appealed in the shape of a strong, well-muscled frame before the drink did its worst. And he had features that they read things into; a full, sensual mouth, deep-set hooded eyes, a mumbling voice that slurred lazily and seemed to break down their defences. He was out of shape now, though. Muscles had gone slack, the skin on his face was lined and sagging, he rarely shaved.

A voice at his elbow slowly roused him from his daze. He looked up with a jerk. The doctor's white coat and pink face came slowly into focus.

‘This is him; this is Richie Palmer.'

Meggie stood, hands clasped, a startled look on her face. She couldn't be sure that the man slumped in his chair was the one she'd seen in the Underground; his condition had gone downhill so fast. He looked up at her, slack-mouthed, unshaven, gasping for breath. Yes, it was the same man. The doctor, worn down by overwork and inadequate resources, showed little compassion. He stood by, prepared to wait only a few minutes before concluding the visit.

Though she recognized Richie as the man she was seeking, feeling his vague gaze upon her, Meggie's gorge rose. Her mother had loved her father. How could anyone have feelings other than revulsion for the broken figure opposite?

He coughed with a loose, rattling sound. His chest heaved. “What is she, a nurse?' he asked, casting round the room to locate the doctor. ‘Send her away. I don't want no nurse.'

‘And you won't get one here. You're lucky to get a bed for a second night,' Munroe told him sharply. He indicated to Meggie that he would go off to fetch Richie's drugs. ‘You'll be all right. He's quiet and comparatively lucid. Say what you've come to say; you have ten minutes.'

She nodded. For a few moments, as the doctor left the room, she saw Richie's eyelids droop and his head loll forward. Perhaps she would get up and leave without trying to talk. Afterwards, she would be able to tell herself that it had all been a case of mistaken identity.

‘If you're not a nurse, what are you?' His eyes were still half closed. A welfare officer? A do-gooder? As he opened his eyes, his forehead creased into a frown. ‘Where am I?' He struggled out of the chair, but his legs refused to support him. He fell back.

‘You're in the Hungerford Club. This is the sickbay.' She didn't offer to help him.

Shaking his head, gazing round the room, at last he dragged his attention back to her face. ‘Sadie?'

One word. It was like a cell door thudding shut, a key turning in a lock. This then
was
her father.

‘No, not Sadie. I'm your daughter, Meggie.'

Again he tried to raise himself. The small yellow room was filled with his swearing and his gasping breath. ‘Sadie. It's Sadie, ain't it?'

‘It's Meggie.' A dreadful calm came over her.

‘I want to get out of here.'

‘Shall I fetch the doctor?'

He swore again. ‘Why are you here?'

He couldn't clear his head of the mad notion that he'd lost nearly twenty years and was staring into the face of the woman he'd snatched from the smug safety of her family on Duke Street, tied her to him in the face of Rob Parsons' bitter opposition, got her pregnant, then ditched her. In the corner of the room there would lurk the angry brother waiting to get his revenge.