Sons and Daughters (30 page)

‘Bless the woman,’ murmured Boots.

‘Procrastination will get you nowhere,’ said Polly. ‘Watch my teeth.’ She showed them, moistly white between modestly carmined lips.

‘Excellent,’ said Boots, ‘who’s your dentist?’

‘My toothbrush,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, come on, old love, what’s going on?’

‘The fact is,’ said Boots, ‘after the incidents relating to the bales of nylon, I didn’t think I needed to alarm you over something else that was a bit murky.’

‘Alarm me?’ said Polly. ‘The only alarm I’d feel would be for the opposition, so come on, Geronimo, who’s trying to set fire to your wigwam this time?’

‘Same old cowboy,’ said Boots, and told her in detail about the man in the car who had fired a crossbow bolt at himself and Sammy, and how Mitch, in putting the van into reverse at the critical moment, had taken the full impact.

‘Oh, my God,’ said Polly, ‘now I am alarmed. And aghast.’

‘Yes, not exactly pleasant,’ said Boots, and told of the car’s collision with a bus, the sight he had of
a crossbow, the hospitalization of the driver, and the visit that resulted in extracting information and the name of what one could call the prime suspect. Ben Ford.

‘Him again?’ said Polly. ‘The Fat Man? Get him here and I’ll lynch him. Or will you and Sammy do it?’

‘I think we’ll send him a letter,’ said Boots.

‘A letter?’ said Polly. ‘A letter? The man’s Public Enemy Number One. Phone the police.’

‘Calling in the police will mean turning keen business rivalry into war,’ said Boots. ‘Very messy.’

‘If it’s not messy war already, I’m a mountain goat,’ said Polly.

‘We’ll settle for a letter,’ said Boots.

‘Can I trust you to make that effective?’ asked Polly.

‘We’ll see,’ said Boots.

Polly gave him a searching look. It was no surprise to find not the slightest sign of a man worried. His lurking smile surfaced, and his lazy left eye performed a slow wink. That told her that what he had in mind for Mr Ben Ford wasn’t likely to make the Fat Man think Christmas had come.

Polly smiled.

‘Go get him, Geronimo,’ she said.

The following day, ex-Corporal Mitchell broke his journey to the firm’s shop in Oxford Street by parking the van near the Elephant and Castle. It was an area devastated by German bombers, and development had begun by way of levelling ugly
sites. Mitch entered the building in which the Fat Man’s offices were situated. He announced himself to a heavy, the man called Rollo.

Rollo, who, in company with Large Lump, had so far failed to find any hospital that had admitted the Parson, spoke to the Fat Man half a minute later.

‘A bloke to see you, guv,’ he said.

‘What bloke?’

‘Says he’s got an important letter for you, and that he’s got to deliver it personal.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Just some elderly geezer.’

‘Let’s have him in, then.’

Mitch was admitted. He’d been in this place before, years ago, and he recognized the Fat Man at once, a barrel of lard squashed into his padded chair, a large geezer standing beside the desk.

‘Morning to yer, Mr Ford,’ said old soldier Mitch.

‘You’ve got a letter for me?’

‘You bet,’ said Mitch, and drew a stout brown envelope out of his jacket pocket. ‘It’s from Mr Adams.’

‘Oh, is it, eh? Which one?’

‘Mr Adams senior, Mr Robert Adams.’

‘The one called Boots?’ Fat Man’s face contorted, and his voice emerged to sound a bit like a suet pudding fighting for survival in a sea of dumplings. ‘Boots, you’re telling me?’

‘The same,’ said Mitch and placed the letter on the desk. Its brown envelope seemed heavy. Large
Lump, guarding his boss, watched as the Fat Man picked it up, weighed it in his hand and shot Mitch a suspicious glance.

‘It won’t bite, I promise yer,’ said Mitch.

‘You’ll be bleedin’ dead if it does,’ said Fat Man, and ripped the envelope. A steel bolt fell out and hit the desk with a dull thud. ‘What the hell . . .?’

‘I said so,’ remarked Mitch, ‘I said it wouldn’t bite, didn’t I?’

Fat Man extracted a folded sheet of notepaper. He read the message it contained.

‘Your man’s in King’s College Hospital. You’ll join him any time between now and next week, with a bolt like this one in your belly unless you move far far away. You can believe this. Robert Adams.’

Fat Man positively paled and his huge girth seemed to shrink like a leaking balloon. He knew Boots all too well and he remembered the two young men who had made mincemeat of his heavies, and done Sparky over. They were more than capable of doing himself over. Suddenly, Fat Man recognized the unpalatable fact that life for him was plainly dangerous.

‘Hospital?’ he croaked.

‘A bloke name of George Wheeler,’ said Mitch. ‘’Orrible geezer. See that bolt, Mr Ford? He fired it from a crossbow at me employers outside their offices at Camberwell Green. Missed. Then he had an accident that put him in King’s College Hospital. Nasty, it was. He won’t be out too quick. That’s all. Good morning to yer, Mr Ford.’

Mitch left, leaving Large Lump and Rollo gaping and the Fat Man sagging.

‘Well, I ain’t never heard anyone sauce yer like that before, guv,’ said Large Lump. ‘You going to make plans to do a real heavy job, say with extra back-up?’

‘And end up in that bleedin’ hospital?’ wheezed Fat Man. ‘No, I ain’t. I’m emigrating.’

‘Emigrating?’ said Large Lump. ‘Where to?’

‘Bloody Australia, where else?’ bawled Fat Man. ‘But first, you shove off to that hospital and get my fifty quid back from the Parson, real monicker George Wheeler.’

Lulu and Paul were in Walworth Road, near the East Street market, handing out leaflets to passersby. The weather had turned cloudy and cool, and Lulu was in a thick, shaggy brown jumper and one of her long skirts. She offered a leaflet to a buxom woman carrying an umbrella to cope with the threat of rain. The woman took it, walked on, stopped, read the leaflet and brought it back.

‘Here, what d’you give me this rubbish for?’ she said.

‘To let you see the Labour Party needs your vote,’ said Lulu.

‘Well, they ain’t getting it,’ said the woman belligerently, ‘and I hope they ain’t getting yourn, either.’

‘The Labour Party—’

‘I don’t want no cheek,’ said the woman. ‘What’s this bit about keeping Churchill out?’

‘It’s—’

‘It don’t even call him Mr Churchill,’ said the woman accusingly. ‘Where’s your manners?’

‘We don’t consider—’

‘I’m admiring of Mr Churchill,’ said the woman, ‘and so’s me old man, bless his whiskers.’

‘Many people don’t share—’

‘Well, they ought to,’ said the woman. ‘How many leaflets you got there?’

‘A bundle, and—’

‘I’ll take the lot,’ said the woman.

‘You’re not getting them,’ said Lulu.

‘Give ’em here, so’s I can make a bonfire of them in me back yard,’ said the woman.

‘Now look here, missus—’

‘I’ll learn yer,’ said the woman, and swung her umbrella.

Lulu ducked, and up came Paul, together with several gawpers.

‘What’s the trouble?’ asked Paul.

The buxom woman, seeing that he too held a bundle of leaflets, cracked him over the head with her umbrella.

‘Vote for Mr Churchill!’ she yelled.

‘Sorry you’re not one of us, lady,’ said Paul. He took Lulu by the arm and pulled her away, crossing the road with her.

‘D’you mind not dragging me?’ said Lulu.

‘And d’you mind not upsetting people?’ said Paul.

‘Well, that’s choice, I must say,’ said Lulu. ‘What a silly old biddy. Didn’t give me a chance to put
more than two words together. How’s your fat head? Did she raise a bump?’

‘It’s not damaged,’ said Paul. ‘Come on, it’s lunchtime, and I’ll treat you to a meal in the pie and mash shop in the market.’

‘Pie and mash?’ said Lulu. ‘Now you’re talking. And I’m not proud. Pride’s a sin. Tories have got a surplus. My father grew up on pie and mash. Pity he didn’t eat more greens. Then he’d have had more brains. Brains get you to Prime Minister level. Still, he’s on the Honest Joe level. That gets him a steady following.’

‘Is that a speech or a large helping of unsolicited information?’ asked Paul as they made their way to the market.

‘All of us should receive information gratefully,’ said Lulu. ‘It helps our education.’ She handed out a leaflet to a stallholder as they entered the market. The stallholder promptly used it to wrap up a bunch of spring onions for a customer.

‘He wasn’t grateful,’ said Paul. ‘Still, that kind of gesture educates us in one thing. How to take rebuffs to our bosoms and fight discouragement.’

‘I don’t know about your bosom,’ said Lulu, ‘but leave mine out of it.’

‘Just a figure of speech,’ said Paul, and took her into the old-established pie and mash shop, where in very short time they were sitting down to a nourishing meal, along with people who, like Lulu’s dad, seemed to have grown up very sturdily on this popular Walworth fare. If the UK was still in the doldrums, the market wasn’t. The noise of
hustle and bustle penetrated the shop in cheerful fashion, and there was a regular intake of buoyant customers buying hot pies to take away.

‘Ta for treat,’ said Lulu when she and Paul were making their way back to their office, ‘I enjoyed it. I suppose you could be a worse old fusspot.’

‘You’re music to my ears,’ said Paul, and handed a leaflet to an approaching bloke, who took one look at it and thrust it back, planting it on Paul’s waistcoat.

‘Keep it, mate, light yer fire with it,’ he said, and went on like a man who’d enjoyed a satisfying moment.

Lulu’s specs reflected joy.

‘There, that’s one in the eye for your bosom,’ she said, and laughed.

Paul grinned.

‘Just another educating rebuff,’ he said.

Boots wanted to know something, and asked Mr Finch to do him a favour. Mr Finch knew how much he owed Boots for never breathing a word about his German origins. Lately, he had been wondering if the time had come to give Chinese Lady all the facts of his life, but he felt too many years had passed, and so he eventually came to the conclusion that here was a definite case where it was better to let sleeping dogs lie. That meant, as far as Chinese Lady and her family were concerned, that he would take his deepest secrets to the grave with him, for he also knew Boots would ensure they stayed buried.

The British Secret Service had all the facts on his file, of course, but he had their word that on his death the file would be destroyed.

He did Boots the requested favour. He went to Whitehall, where old colleagues still not of retiring age greeted him in their pleasantly civilized way.

That evening, while Chinese Lady was entertaining two old friends from Walworth, he called on Boots and Polly to tell them what had happened to Erich Kirsten and Hanna Friedler, once of Himmler’s notorious SS. Their long interrogation had produced amazing results. Yes, they had both escaped during their escorted journey from Belsen to Nuremberg. Knowing they were listed by British security forces, they decided to avoid the risk of being recaptured and turned east with the intention of making their way into Austria where, at its border with Italy, they could make contact with couriers of an SS escape route and secure new identity papers in Rome.

They did manage to reach Austria, but south of Vienna their luck ran out. They were picked up by Russians and ended up in Moscow, to be interrogated by Stalin’s secret police. Here came a fundamental change in their outlook, a change that had occurred in General von Paulus, the captured Commander of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. They were brainwashed very successfully, and they turned their coats, as he had, in the induced belief that Stalin and his Russians had proved superior in both war and ideology to Hitler and his Germans. They became agents for Stalin’s
KGB, and agreed to form a cell in London with documents identifying them as Poles who had served with the Free Polish Army.

During the final stages of their interrogation by the British, they came up with the names of people recruited by them to serve the cause of Soviet Russia. Hanna Friedler had played the traditional siren’s part in this, and so had a hidden camera.

‘So there you are,’ said Mr Finch at the end of his recounting.

‘Dear God, what a pair of frightful stinkers,’ said Polly, ‘with a disgusting record as cold-blooded executioners of Jewish women and children.’

‘So what’s going to happen to them now?’ asked Boots.

‘Whitehall can’t quite make up its mind whether to hand them over to the Russians, who’d certainly execute them, or to make use of them,’ said Mr Finch.

‘What’s wrong with hanging them from some stark tree on some blasted heath?’ said Polly.

Mr Finch said, ‘Polly my dear, in my retirement I’m not privy to the innermost corridors of Whitehall.’

‘Edwin old sport,’ said Polly, who at least knew his government work had been with British Intelligence, ‘you’re not going to be knighted for having been a mere tiddler.’

‘I think I was able to infer a new attitude is developing,’ said Mr Finch. ‘That of making use of some war criminals, instead of extraditing them to
Nuremberg. I think America is already doing so. Not publicly, of course.’

‘If Erich Kirsten and Hanna Friedler are going to escape trial and execution,’ said Boots, ‘I smell political perfidy.’

‘On the other hand,’ said Mr Finch, ‘much of what they divulged was in return for – um – favours, although no promises were made.’

‘Which probably still means they won’t be hanged,’ said Boots.

‘We’ll have to wait and see, Boots,’ said Mr Finch.

The Labour government secured the passing of an act that gave the workers a statutory five-day week, thus enabling them to enjoy a full weekend break.

One Saturday morning, Sammy and Susie’s elder son Daniel was high on a ladder at the back of his house in Kestrel Avenue, off Herne Hill, south of Denmark Hill. He was fixing a gutter support, driving in a new bolt as a replacement for a broken one. At the foot of the ladder stood his wife Patsy, and nearby was their little daughter, Arabella. Patsy had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder to keep it steady.