The Wayward Wife (29 page)

To celebrate he had slept all afternoon and, with Susan stuck in Portland Place, had allowed Pete Slocum to lure him out to dine at the Mayfair.

There, raid or no raid, some of the old Paris gang had gathered, dinner continued to be served and Jack Jackson's band played ‘These Foolish Things' so slow and sentimental that it should have been banned by the Lord Chamberlain.

Tina, the girl he was dancing with – one of Slocum's young honeys – had whispered things in his ear that no decent young woman should know let alone suggest to an able-bodied stranger. Suddenly it was fun again and as they dashed back to the Lansdowne through London's dark streets the tedium of waiting for war to come lifted and they were no longer bored spectators but excited participants, ducking bombs and shrapnel right here in old London town.

Tina, the blonde honey, young, slim-hipped and as sinuous as a snake, would have gone to bed with him at the drop of a hat.

God knows, he was so high he was almost tempted to take her up on it. But he owed Susan something, he supposed, and went off to his room with nothing hotter than a jug of black coffee and, locking the door, pulled up the typewriter, lit a cigarette, and went to work on a tailpiece for Tuesday's programme.

‘So she lost a brother,' Pete Slocum said. ‘In a shooting war everyone loses someone sooner or later. You never met the guy, did you?'

‘Never did,' Bob said. ‘Kind of wish I had now.'

‘Surely you aren't thinking of gatecrashing the funeral?' Slocum said. ‘Though you could probably cobble up a moist thousand words out of it, given that the guy was a fireman.'

‘Susan doesn't want me there. She made that clear.'

‘Of course she don't want you there,' Slocum said. ‘It'll be a big family do with buckets of tears and fond memories. You're not part of it. If anyone climbs into bed with your sweetheart tonight, it'll be her husband. Anyhow, you don't care for her enough to give it up, do you?'

‘Give what up?'

‘Your career.'

‘What's Susan got to do with my career?' Bob said.

‘London will be burned out soon and there'll be nothing left to write about and we'll all move on.'

‘Do you really think we'll be pulled out?'

‘Sure of it. It's the way of all wars, the beauty of all wars,' Slocum said. ‘Your Miss Hooper isn't like you and me. She's no vagrant, no pilgrim on life's highway taking it all as it comes. She's enjoyed a wartime fling but reality has bitten her on the butt and she's no longer interested in some he-man who makes her feel like Gloria Swanson every time he rips her panties off.'

‘Baloney!' Bob said. ‘You don't know what you're—'

‘Right now,' Slocum went on relentlessly, ‘she needs – let's call it, in quote marks, sympathy and understanding. You might deliver good sex, Gaines, but with her brother lying dead on a slab in the morgue the woman isn't interested in counting orgasms. She'll probably convince herself she's to blame for whatever happened and when she gets tired of blaming herself she'll get around to blaming you. Believe me, man, the last thing you want in your bed is a guilt-ridden dame.'

‘Hasn't it occurred to you yet that I might love her?'

‘Do you?'

Bob did not answer.

‘What's up? Cat got your tongue?' Pete Slocum said. ‘Or have you just figured your sweetheart has got you by the short hairs. She's free to choose between you and the husband. My guess is it won't be you. You've done your bit, served your purpose, but now she's scared and hurting and wants it back the way it was before. And that means bye-bye Bob.'

‘I owe her—'

‘You owe her nothing,' Pete Slocum said. ‘She's the one who led you on. She didn't even tell you she had a husband until she had you hooked. She was a lay, Bob, an easy lay, that's all.'

‘Hell, Pete, she's just lost her brother.'

‘And you feel sorry for her?'

‘Of course, I do.' Bob hesitated. ‘But …'

‘But what?' Pete Slocum said.

‘I'm beginning to think you're right.'

Father Joseph O'Mara, known to all and sundry as Father Joe, not only came from Limerick but before he'd joined the priesthood had been ten years a Boy Scout. He was thus able to engage Nora in conversation about the beauty of the Shannon estuary, which he regarded as just next door to heaven, while at the same time building a fire out of scrap wood and rigging up a grid on which to balance not one but three frying-pans, two kettles and a little saucepan to warm milk for babies.

With the sleeves of his surplice rolled up and fastened by what looked suspiciously like a pair of lady's garters, Father Joe cheerfully cooked sausages, bacon and, speciality of the house, savoury potato cakes that melted in your hand before they even reached your mouth. Meanwhile his team of youthful helpers, who didn't have to try too hard to look pitiful, scuttled round the markets and purchased such comestibles as they couldn't scrounge for free.

While the feeding of the not quite five thousand was taking place on the steps of St Veronica's, the Borough Council ferried in a load of timber and a couple of carpenters to line the ancient walls with bunks to provide rest as well as shelter for upward of seventy souls; all of which activity made it plain that the crypt of St Veronica's was destined to become a home for the homeless, Breda, Billy, Nora and Matt among them, for some time to come.

Father Joe was not alone in dispensing succour to a flock that included Jews as well as Catholics and a few diehard Protestant agnostics like Matt Hooper. Four nuns had popped up out of nowhere accompanied by a venerable priest, Father Grogan, who, name notwithstanding, was frightfully English and frightfully posh. It was he who heard confessions, he who, at Nora Romano's request, held a special Mass for the soul of her son-in-law and who, kneeling on the flagstones by her side, offered Breda comfort when a great storm of grief overwhelmed her.

Utterly exhausted, Breda had slept through Monday night's air raid curled up on a mattress in a corner of the crypt with Nora on one side, Matt on the other and her sister-in-law, Susan, stretched out beside her.

Now, seated on the steps of St Vee's in hazy morning sunlight, a mug of tea clamped in her bandaged hands, she was waiting impatiently for Danny to show up and her life as a widow to begin.

Fifteen hours it had taken him to travel from Evesham to London; fifteen hours of what, under other circumstances, he would have regarded as hell.

Three trains, two short bus rides, several interminable hours in a temporary shelter under a railway bridge not more than ten miles from Paddington while drivers, guards, repair workers and one harassed station master waited for instructions from some mysterious source up-line and what seemed like half a battalion of Scots Guards, on the move from somewhere to somewhere else, had foamed and snorted and threatened mutiny if something wasn't done to sort things out.

Huddled up in a raincoat that Griff had loaned him, Danny had kept himself to himself. He had four pounds and fifteen shillings in his pocket; four pounds and fifteen shillings that Mr Harrison had grudgingly doled out when it became obvious that, short of clapping him in irons, Mr Cahill would not be deterred from abandoning his post and taking three days' leave to travel up to London to comfort his wife.

London had been badly hit in Monday night's raid. Even the soldiers had been subdued when the train had limped alongside the one and only platform in Paddington station that hadn't been damaged.

Danny had tried not to look at the twisted girders and buried carriages piled up beside the train, at fires still burning by the main entrance and the bodies of travellers, whose journeys had come to an abrupt end, laid out on a stretch of platform by the postal clearing offices like so many damaged parcels.

He ran for the one exit that showed daylight, and, darting among the ambulances and fire tenders that cluttered the side street, headed for the Edgware Road in the hope of finding a bus to carry him east into Shadwell.

‘You took your bleedin' time,' Breda said. ‘You'd think there was a war on or somethin'.' She rested her head on his chest and let the tears flow, while Danny, looking over her shoulder, scanned the steps for Susan.

‘She's down below,' Breda said, at length, ‘helpin' sort out blankets. Billy's in the Princess an' somebody's got to collect 'im an' bring 'im back 'ere. That's you, Danny. That's your job.'

‘Whoa!' Danny said. ‘That's not something I should be doin', Breda. The wee guy'll expect you to be there.'

‘I got other things to do.'

‘Funeral arrangements, you mean?'

She thumped his chest with the back of a bandaged fist and told him why there would be no funeral for Ronnie Hooper, why they were all here in Pound Lane and why he was the one she'd chosen to break the bad news to her son. ‘'Cause I can't do it without cryin' an' I don't want Billy to see me cry.'

‘What about Nora?'

‘Nora's not up to it an' the old man's got a busted foot. He can't walk ten yards without sittin' down.'

‘What happened to your hands?'

‘Never mind my bleedin' 'ands. I'm askin' you to do this for me, Danny. If you won't do it for me,' she paused and, with a stifled sob, added, ‘do it for Ronnie.'

‘That's blackmail, Breda,' Danny said.

‘It certainly is,' said Breda.

Susan hated the airless crypt, the smell of unwashed bodies, the chatter of unruly children, snivelling women and screaming infants and, most of all, the priests and nuns whose optimism was so patently forced.

Fatigue had much to do with her foul mood. She had slept badly, waking with every muffled thud, every rattle, every exaggerated cry with which the women around her dramatised their fear and drew attention to themselves.

She was better dressed than most of them and better spoken too but, leery of seeming haughty, smiled and nodded and, when required, pitched in by conducting some wretched child to the lavatory, or collecting greasy plates and carrying them into the vestibule where a nun and a young boy were washing them in a tin bath, all the while seething with impatience to be back in Portland Place or Rothwell Gardens or in bed with Robert in his room in the Lansdowne.

She climbed the steep stone staircase that led up from the crypt, the damp-wool smell of blankets clinging to her clothes.

The sky was free of aircraft, though a barrage balloon, soggy in the soft morning light, drifted like a cloud over the rooftops. She stared up at the balloon for a moment, then, stepping into Pound Lane, found herself face to face with her husband.

He was seated on the steps with her father, Nora and Breda calmly sipping tea and eating a potato cake. He didn't rise to greet her and she resented his lack of response. After all, she was his wife and had just lost her brother and he had no right to ignore the conventions of mourning.

She stood before him, looking down.

‘I take it,' she said, ‘you know what happened to Ron?'

‘Aye, Breda told me.'

‘It seems we're to be denied a proper funeral.'

‘That's how it looks.'

‘Obviously you got my message. I wasn't sure you'd be able to leave Wood Norton but I thought you ought to be informed. I mean, I thought you'd want to know.'

‘'Course 'e wanted to know,' Breda said. ‘He's come up to 'elp us through it. Ha'n't you, Danny?'

Susan ignored her. ‘Are you staying at the flat?'

‘I haven't thought about it. I've only just got here.'

‘If you do go to the flat,' Susan said, ‘will you pick up some things for me and leave them at the House?'

‘What 'ouse?' her father said. ‘You got a 'ouse now?'

‘She means the BBC, Matt,' Danny said, then, to Susan, ‘Even if we don't have any more raids, I doubt if I'll be able to make it to Rothwell Gardens. I've too many things to do here.'

‘What things?' said Susan.

Danny got up slowly, wearily. Only then did she realise that what she had taken to be hostility was probably nothing more than exhaustion. She felt a wave of pity rise up in her, though whether it was pity for Danny or for herself she could not at that moment be sure.

He took her arm and walked her away from the steps.

‘For God's sake, Susan, go easy,' he said. ‘Aye, you've lost a brother but Breda's lost everythin'. No house, no husband, her boy lyin' sick in the Princess; a kid without a father. Nora's in a state of shock an' your father's useless. Who else do you think Breda's goin' tae turn to? I'm about all she's got, poor bitch.'

‘What about—' Susan began.

‘You?' Danny said. ‘Losing Ronnie hurts – I'm damned sure it does – but you've got as much as anybody to hang on to an' a damned sight more than most.'

‘And you, what about you?'

‘I've still got a job an' a place to—'

‘No. I mean, do I still have you?'

She saw his eyes widen and he did not answer at once. ‘No, Susan,' he said at length, ‘you don't have me.'

‘Didn't you get my letter?'

‘What letter?'

‘I sent you a letter.'

‘Sayin' what?'

‘Just that I loved you and always will.'

‘I don't have time for this right now,' Danny said. ‘Breda needs me to fetch Billy from the hospital.'

‘Why doesn't she do it herself?'

‘Because she's scared he'll ask her where Ron is. Besides, she'll have to get down to Pitt Street to see if she can find anything worth salvaging. Clothes, shoes, any food that hasn't been eaten by the rats. Wee bits of stuff she might want to keep.'

‘Mementoes, you mean?'

‘Aye, that's what I mean,' Danny said. ‘Look, there's no point in you hangin' round here, Susan. They'll have shelter in the church for as long as they need it. I'll see them settled before I go back to Evesham. Go on, you've an important job to do.'