Last Rights (15 page)

I’d heard that some people spend all day down tube stations, but I never understood what this meant until I went to Bethnal
Green that evening. I walked there, through the rain, past some people crying and others singing. You can see every feeling
in this city now. You can see firm chins and stout spirits even in the most awful circumstances and you can see despair that
goes far beyond the loss of hope. A woman staring into a rain-filled hole, her eyes dry and numb as if they’re blind. Makes
you wonder what or who is down that hole. But unless there’s just been a raid, you probably don’t ask. Whatever it was is
dead now.

I have so few clothes these days I have to wear what I wear for work or I’d go naked most of the time. So there I was, all
in black, the veil around my hat sodden with rainwater, hanging down the back of my neck, walking through the shattered remains
of people’s lives and what
was left of their property. Like Death himself. I could see the marks of fear in their eyes as I passed. I heard the way many
of them went silent as they looked at me. Maybe some thought they were suffering visions, finally gone mad with it all.

Even when I got to the tube station that illusion continued.

I asked the bloke at the ticket office for a platform ticket and he said, ‘Someone copped it down there, did they, pal?’

‘Not that I know of,’ I said, as I raked in my pockets for coppers.

‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Not here on business, then?’

‘I hope not.’

‘You know they’re all packed in like sardines down there, don’t you?’ he said.

I felt my face flush with anxiety, but I smiled weakly and walked away without answering.

It’s the smell as hits you first. Musty and rank. A mixture of rain-sodden clothes, fag smoke, sweat, urine and something
sweet and sickly, like milk. All of it overlaid with the usual smells of the tube: the wood of the carriages, oil, the brilliantine
on the men’s heads as they get out at the stations. The trains keep on running, the passengers getting off on to platforms
that serve as parlours, bedrooms, kitchens and brothels.

A train had just pulled in when I got down on to the platform. I had to press myself against the wall so that shop girls and
old clerks, tailors and soldiers home on leave could get to the exit. Stepping gingerly over mums trying to calm excited youngsters,
the passengers would
pick their way, saying, ‘Sorry, love,’ ‘Excuse me,’ or ‘Mind out the bleedin’ way, Missus,’ according to how they felt. As
I looked down the eastbound platform, I felt my heart sink. How on earth was I ever going to find Velma among this lot? There
were thousands of them, hordes of jabbering people, mostly in brown or grey coats. They looked like a great mat of cockroaches
spread out on the floor in front of me. Just to breathe I had to concentrate. I was so scared and could have lost myself to
my fear so easily. To prove to myself I could do it, I raised an arm a little bit and then I started to feel better.

As soon as I began to move among the largely seated crowd, the problems I’d experienced earlier with people outside reappeared.

‘Fucking hell, you know when Death’s in town, don’t you?’ one bright spark said. ‘Bloody smell!’

A lot of people say that all of us, in my line of work, smell of the french polish we use to shine up the coffins but I’ve
never noticed it myself so I just pushed on without comment.

‘Here, you’ve not come for Gracie Rose, have you?’

The woman, who was probably about fifty, had one hand on the bottom of my coat while the other one clutched on to an older
woman sitting beside her.

‘No . . .’

‘Well, her chest was shocking until about an hour ago,’ the woman said. ‘Then it all went quiet. I could well believe she’d
passed on.’

‘God love her!’ her companion said, shaking her head as she did so.

‘I’m actually looking for a living person,’ I said. ‘A young girl, about fifteen, thin. She’s on her own . . .’

‘She your daughter?’

‘No,’ I said, and then I added, ‘She’s been staying with our family. Her mum’s bombed out and—’

‘Oh, poor kid,’ the fifty-year-old said.

‘God love her,’ her companion chipped in.

But no, they hadn’t seen a girl like that on her own so I went on my way, aware that the two women and, indeed, many other
people were watching my progress. If Velma was trying to hide herself away I was going to be easy to avoid. Between being
asked whether I’d ‘come for Eddie’, ‘been sent by the Reverend Goody’ or being told to ‘Tell that bastard Cox he can have
his money when our Gordon’s been paid’, there wasn’t much chance I could pass unnoticed. It was only when I moved down one
of the small corridors that connects the eastbound to the westbound platform, where most people seemed to be asleep, that
I managed to regain anything like a bit of peace. In fact if she hadn’t pulled on my coat to catch my attention, I would most
certainly have stepped right over Velma. But she did pull my coat, which made me look down and see her dirty, desperate little
face. She must, I thought, have finally got tired of all the noise, the smell and probably the hunger too.

The Duchess had knocked up some chapattis that morning, one of which I’d grabbed for later. It was wrapped in greaseproof
in my coat pocket. I wondered what the hell Velma would make of it.

‘You should keep away from me, Mr Hancock,’ Velma
said, as she sat up and I gingerly slotted myself down beside her.

I handed over the chapatti. ‘Eat this,’ I said. And when she opened it and pulled a face I said, ‘It’s an Indian pancake.
My mum made it.’

I knew that Velma and the Duchess had got on famously. The girl began on the chapatti without further ado and with a ravenousness
that was painful to watch. Christ knows when she’d last eaten. I rolled up and then lit a fag.

Once Velma had finished the chapatti she turned to me and said, ‘It ain’t safe for you to be with me, Mr Hancock.’

‘Why’s that, Velma?’

She put her head down and hugged her knees to her chest.

‘Is it because of the Dooleys?’

She looked up again sharply, her face white with fear. ‘They said that my mum was a murderer,’ she said. ‘They said she was
going to hang and that if anyone tried to help her they’d kill them.’

‘Who said this?’

‘Johnny. Outside the police station.’

A deep, sucking sound heralded the arrival of a train and so, for the moment, Velma and I didn’t speak as the rails first
hummed and then clattered under its weight. As the people got off, I put out my hand to Velma in case we should become separated.
After a moment’s hesitation, she took it and we remained joined by our hands until all the passengers had either gone to the
exit or joined the throng on the platform.

‘Who’s Johnny?’ I asked Velma, as soon as the train had gone on its way.

‘One of Kevin’s younger brothers,’ she said. ‘There’s Johnny, Ernie and Dickie, but it’s Johnny who’s really mad about Kevin
and Mum and everything. And Martine. She’s in a right state, she is.’

‘Is that Kevin’s sister?’

‘No. She’s Johnny’s missus. She was really cut up about Kevin. She liked him. When they told her he was dead she cried and
cried. Johnny had to slap her to stop it in the end.’

It was said with such innocence that it made me almost ashamed to have the thoughts I was having. But I had them anyway. All
the men who’d visited me that afternoon had been younger than Kevin Dooley; the one who’d threatened me was probably Johnny.
Johnny whose missus, Martine, was so devastated by the death of her brother-in-law she was reduced to hysteria. What, I wondered,
was Johnny really so ‘mad’ about? And why was he so convinced of Pearl’s guilt? Did he, perhaps, know something no one else
did? What, I couldn’t help thinking, had Johnny been doing on the night of Kevin’s death? The family had supposedly all been
together. But Johnny’s behaviour made me wonder.

‘What do Johnny and his brothers do, Velma?’ I asked.

‘I dunno what Johnny does,’ she said, ‘but Martine always has nice things. Ernie’s in the navy and Dickie’s waiting to go
in the forces. He’s only seventeen.’

You come across people like Johnny Dooley, blokes whose occupation is ‘uncertain’, in pubs, down back
alleys. I even had one come to the shop once. He’d lifted his hat, put a big metal can in front of me and asked me if I wanted
to buy any petrol. I took him out the back, showed him Rama and Sita, then threw him into the street.

‘Velma, do you know of anyone who has anything against your mum?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Anyone who doesn’t like her.’

‘Only Kevin’s mum,’ she said. ‘Johnny and all the others used to be all right with her until now. She was quite pally with
Martine who did used to sometimes try and stop Kevin when he hit Mum. Sometimes he did too – stop, that is. But then all this
happened and now they all hate Mum, even Martine . . .’

Up above, over the sound of the voices and the bodies down the tube, the piercing sound of the air-raid sirens wailed into
life. For a moment, everything else went silent. People stopped whatever they were doing and looked up as if searching for
the source of the warning up above.

‘The Jerries are coming,’ Velma said.

‘Y-y-yes.’

And I was deep underground.

Velma took my hand and said, ‘It’s all right, Mr Hancock, we’re safe down here.’

I tried to smile but knew from her face that I’d failed. Over on the eastbound platform they started singing ‘Roll Out The
Barrel’.

O
nce the all-clear had sounded I persuaded Velma to come back with me. I told her about the visit I’d had from Johnny and his
brothers and what they’d said, but I reckoned that if she stayed in the flat for the time being, she’d be all right. Anyway,
the poor kid had to go somewhere and I knew that, if nothing else, the Duchess would take care of her. There was also Mr Blatt
to consider. He wanted to speak to Velma so he could use what she said about the night Kevin died to help defend her mother.
So, all in all, it was better she was with us, in spite of the risk from the Dooleys, for the time being.

When I got back to the shop, however, I found more than the coffin containing Cherry Hazlitt waiting for me. I decided to
bring Velma in through the back door so the first person I saw as I entered the premises was Walter Bridges mucking out the
horses. Arthur, who was doing his bit too, quickly made himself scarce. I told Velma to follow the boy in and wait for me
in the kitchen.

‘I’m ever so sorry about—’ Walter began.

‘If you ever let me down like that again, you’ll have your cards,’ I said, without looking at him. I was too tired to want
to listen to his apology. ‘We’ve an interment this afternoon at two,’ I continued, ‘a woman from a family of women, so you’ll
have to drive and bear, and if I smell so much as a drop of the sauce on you I’ll hit you so hard not even your own mother’d
recognise you after I’ve done.’

I went inside without another word to find Fred Bryant waiting to see me.

‘You found the kid, then?’ he said, as he watched Velma walk up the stairs with Nan. ‘Should’ve called us, Mr H.’

‘Yes. Well. Good, isn’t it?’ I said. I didn’t want to dwell on the fact that I’d been more successful than the police. After
all, Fred and I knew that.

‘You know her mum’s solicitor, Mr Blatt, wants to talk to her?’ Fred said. ‘Building her defence case and that.’

‘Yes. I’ll let him know,’ I replied. ‘But I don’t want the Dooleys knowing too, Fred. They threatened Velma. She isn’t safe
with them.’

‘They’re the nearest thing to family she’s got.’

‘Fred, she’s frightened of them,’ I said. ‘If you let them know where she is, you could be putting her in danger. You saw
for yourself how they called abuse after her when she left the station. She was so scared she wouldn’t even come back here
and tell me!’

‘So, she want to make a complaint or—’

‘No,’ I said. ‘But look, Fred, they not only threatened Velma, they – or, rather, Johnny Dooley – threatened me too.’

‘Oh, so do
you
want to make—’

‘No, I don’t want to make a complaint either,’ I said. ‘Just keep that family away from here.’ I pulled the policeman to one
side and lowered my voice. ‘Look, Fred, the Dooleys say they were all together on the night that Kevin died, all except Pearl
and Velma.’

Fred frowned. ‘Now, you know I can’t discuss police work with you, Mr H.’

‘Johnny Dooley wants Pearl to go down,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he cares too much whether she’s guilty or not, but there’s
something very dodgy about him.’ I didn’t go into what I’d made of Velma’s innocent observations about Kevin and Martine Dooley.
After all, they were a child’s observations.

‘And how do you know Pearl isn’t guilty?’ Fred replied smartly.

‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I just think that Johnny’s a bit . . . over-eager, shall we say?’

‘Evidence seems to point in Pearl Dooley’s direction at the moment . . .’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Everyone but her has got an alibi,’ Fred said. ‘Vi and all her lot, including Johnny and his missus, were down their Anderson.
Went down as soon as the siren went. Watkins next door saw ’em go.’

‘Yes, but hard families like the Dooleys,’ I began, ‘they can intimidate…’

‘If other people support their story then that’s that,’ Fred responded bluntly. ‘Only Kevin, Pearl and Velma were out that
night. He went out lunch-time and was in and out of pubs or making a general nuisance of himself
in the street all day. His wife and her girl went out at about six and came home in the early hours of the next morning. Gawd
knows where they’d been.’

‘Well, Dot Harris . . .’

‘Dot Harris, she says, spent the night alone,’ Fred said. ‘Like a lot of the old folk, she won’t go down no shelter. Them
“ladies” she lives with don’t even bother to knock for her now. Whatever happened, no one saw Dot, Pearl or her girl all night.’

When the bombing started Hannah told me that Dot wouldn’t use the Anderson one of her mate Bella’s admirers had put up in
the garden. Pearl could have been with Dot or, equally, elsewhere. Unlike Johnny she didn’t have an alibi. Also unlike Johnny,
she wasn’t threatening people. She was just, so far as I could tell, continuing to maintain her innocence.