Half a Crown (32 page)

Carmichael, who did not belong and did not want to be seen, ducked into a newsagent and bought a copy of the
Times.
He sat in another corner café to read it, among the costermongers of Covent Garden, who were having their lunch. He drank Earl Grey tea, and hid behind his newspaper.

“Protests Spreading” read the headline. “Fuhrer Arrives Safely in Britain.” Carmichael read the paper carefully, but there was no mention of his fall, or Elvira’s rescue, or Jack’s death. He hadn’t really expected that there would be. He was interested to read of a protest against death camps in France. Marshal Desjardins had responded that he would have to look into the question.

Carmichael folded the paper up and left it on the table. He walked on, through a city now thoroughly awake, to Ambrose Street.

Although he wouldn’t be recognized, he knew the code phrases, and felt confident he could soon be reunited with Elvira. Then they would both have to wait until Thursday and then—the simplest way out of the country was to take the boat-train from Paddington to Ireland. From Ireland, which maintained a prickly nose-thumbing independence from the practice and policies of the rest of Europe, it would be possible to go farther. They could take ship, or fly, to Canada. Jack had wanted to go to New Zealand, Carmichael remembered, and stopped, caught between two strides by a gale of grief. He blew his nose, that acceptable English substitute for emotion, and kept walking. They should have gone as soon as they knew Elvira was arrested. He should have told Jack as soon as Elvira was safe, to give him the courage to hold on until he could have been
rescued in his turn. He should have gone years ago, as soon as they had the false papers. Jack had persuaded him to stay, to keep on helping.

When he turned onto Ambrose Street he recognized the stakeout at once. The unmarked cars, the men waiting, inconspicuously watching the shop, were unmistakable. He kept on walking, not slowing his stride at all, right through and past them, and on, his heart beating hard against his chest. How had they found Ambrose Street? Had Collins talked? Had that been what Elvira had known and told them—though how could she have? It wasn’t possible. Had they followed them, after all, yesterday? That was the most plausible explanation. How much did they know, how much had they found, was Elvira still safe, or in their hands? He kept walking, regrets replaced by unanswerable questions.

He could track Elvira no farther without help. He had never known the details of the safe houses, beyond Ambrose Street, the gateway. If Penn-Barkis had Ambrose Street he had a great deal, but not everything. They knew where to send people, they had a system of safe houses in London—these were lost, none of them could be considered safe any longer. But they wouldn’t have the rest of it, the mechanism for getting them out of the country, the false papers, the connections with the Inner Watch, all of that would still be safe, unless Collins had talked, or one of the other Inner Watchmen. He needed to call Jacobson. It was an emergency now.

He walked on, quickly, trying to look like someone with somewhere to be, late for an appointment. He tried not to feel eyes on his back as he turned the corner and made his way into the anonymity of other streets. He walked past three red telephone boxes and went into the fourth, one of a pair standing outside the gates of a little park. He dialed Jacobson’s number. He could see the rusting iron railings dividing the road from the trees, and the little square of grass. The telephone rang and rang, with no reply. At last he gave up and dialed
again. This time it was picked up on the first ring, and he had trouble pressing button
B
and getting his pennies inserted in time.

“Jacobson, it’s me, Carmichael,” he said.

“Is this call urgent?” Jacobson asked.

“Yes, it is,” Carmichael said. “Jack’s been arrested, and he’s used his tooth. And there’s more, worse, I don’t want to tell you on the telephone. Can you meet me?”

There was a brief hesitation. “I’ll meet you this afternoon. Where are you?”

“I’ll meet you in Green Park,” he said. “By the tube station, on one of the benches. Three o’clock?”

“All right,” Jacobson said.

For now, Carmichael thought, leaving the telephone box, he’d work on the other end of the problem. With any luck he and Elvira would be able to just buy tickets from Paddington to Rosslare, but as luck seemed not to be going his way, he wanted a backup plan.

He took the Underground to Waterloo, feeling every casual glance an assault. There was a pub here, beside the bridge, a red brick Edwardian pub with grubby stained glass in the windows and an Irish landlady, like hundreds of others all over London. Its name was the Duke of Wellington, and it was known as the Duke’s Head. There was nobody watching outside it, at least nobody Carmichael could see. He walked past on the other side of the road, then crossed back and went in. It was just open, the fire in the grate was smoking and there were no customers. The landlady was wiping down the bar with a striped yellow cloth. “Morning, Breda,” he said.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” the landlady replied, looking up. She was about Carmichael’s own age, closing on forty, and he had known her for a long time. “Trouble? Or were you looking for himself? Because he’s over the water, as you should know.”

“He’s not back yet?” Carmichael asked, casually. “I heard it all went well.”

“Aye, that’s what I heard too, and there’s nothing to go wrong now, as he’s doing nothing against the law on that side. He’s just stopping on a day or two to see his sister’s boy get wed.” Breda stopped mopping the bar and straightened up. “Shall I pour you a drink?”

“I’d prefer a cup of tea,” Carmichael said. “China, if you have it, but anything will do.”

“I don’t know what you want to go muddling up your insides with that stuff for” she said. “Beer’s much better for you. But I’ll put the kettle on. Give me a shout if anyone comes in and wants serving.”

Nobody came in. Carmichael poked the fire, then took a seat at the bar. Breda came out with a steaming mug of tea. “Thank you,” Carmichael said.

“No milk, that’s right, isn’t it? Do you want some lemon? I’ve got some cut up for putting in G and Ts.”

“I’ll have a slice if it’s no trouble,” Carmichael said. She passed him a slice and he dropped it into the mug. Breda settled down on the other side of the bar. “Now, as you’ve guessed, it’s himself I wanted. I am in trouble, bad trouble, and maybe you’ll have to go slow on all of this business and keep your heads down. In any case, you’ll be seeing Mr. Jacobson and not me, because I have to get out.”

“That is bad,” Breda said. “Do you want to lay low here for a bit before you scarper?”

“I’d love to, but I don’t want to put you at risk. What I might need is a ride to the Republic, for me and my niece. It might be safer that way.”

“Well, you know he’d be glad to oblige, any time, but not this week. His nephew’s getting married on Saturday, and of course he’s staying over for Easter, so he won’t be back until next Wednesday. I do have a friend who might be able to help you, though.”

“Someone who helps you with all this?” Carmichael asked.

“Not exactly. He’s an Irishman—” She hesitated. “He’s someone I used to know years ago, before I got into this with you. In fact, my mother was his nanny, back before I was born, and I’ve known him since I was born and he was six years old. He might have his own ways in and out of England. I say might, but I know he does. He’s a bit of a hell-raiser, to tell the truth.”

“What does he do?” Carmichael asked, drinking his tea. “Smuggling?”

“A bit of that, a bit of the bombing, anything with a risk to it. When I think of all the narrow escapes he’s had! But that’s why he might be useful now. He likes something with a bit of a dare to it.” Breda tutted. “But you might want something safer, and if you can hold on until next week, that could probably be arranged too.”

“What’s your fellow’s name?” Carmichael asked.

“He’s calling himself Jimmy, these days,” Breda said. “He’s staying here, though he’s out this morning. You could catch him early this evening if you came back. Come and have a bite of dinner before we open, and I’ll introduce the two of you. Maybe you can do business.”

“Maybe we can, thank you, Breda.” Carmichael smiled at her, glad to feel positive.

“We eat at five, because we open at six. I’ve got a nice bit of liver if you could fancy that. Or—”

“Liver would be lovely,” Carmichael said. He wanted to tell her about Jack, about the pork chops that Jack had bought but would never cook, but he knew if he started to talk about Jack her sympathy would vanish to be replaced with horror and disgust. He applied himself to his tea, and just then a large group of men came in, joking and calling each other names.

It was Raymond who insisted I go to bed; I think my mother would have kept me up half the night telling her the highlights of my life history. Raymond was a very kind man, and no doubt this stood him in good stead as a publican. He seemed entirely sincere in finding my mother more beautiful than I was, though it would hardly have been unkind for a dispassionate eye to have described her as raddled. I had for years hated and resented him, without knowing him at all, for taking my mother away from my father and me. It was very hard to imagine, looking at him, how she could possibly have preferred him to my father, but I suppose there’s no accounting for taste. My father was a busy man, and Raymond obviously adored her. Now, after my father had been dead for years, it was easier to see it as a second marriage—they had married, according to that infallible source of gossip, my aunt Ciss.

I was given the spare bedroom, and fell asleep under a striped bedspread, surrounded by hats—ghastly things with flowers and feathers—and wigs. I dreamed of missed trains, airships, lost cars, luggage, passports, and once, a lost child who was at once little Debbie Berman and myself, who was left behind on a platform as the train steamed inexorably away.

I woke staring at a particularly awful hat, which seemed to have a
whole magenta bird fixed to the side along with a bunch of artificial dog daisies. Sunlight streaming in through the window had woken me; it felt as if I had slept very late.

I lay there for a little while, looking at the hat and thinking back over what had happened in the last couple of days and trying to work out what day it was. Eventually I realized it was Tuesday. I was supposed to be presented that very evening, to be formally introduced to the Queen and to society. Instead I was here. My life had been turned completely upside down and nothing made any sense. This was another one of those awful things that couldn’t be put right and one couldn’t get back before they happened. I wanted to. I wanted to be waking up on Saturday morning again, in my comfortable bedroom in the Maynards’. I wanted the Bermans to be safe in their home. I couldn’t bear to think of where they were instead.

I sat up and combed my hair with the plastic brush the shop woman had given me. It was far more tangled than usual. I would have liked to have washed it but I didn’t know if there was any hot water. I didn’t know what time it was. They had kept my beautiful Swiss watch, just like they’d kept Betsy’s pearls. They were the criminals, really.

There was a tentative knock at the door. “Come in,” I said, pulling the covers around me, in case it was Raymond.

“It’s only me,” my mother said, putting her head around the door. She looked even more raddled in daylight than she had the night before. I swore I would grow old gracefully and never even think about dyeing my hair. “I thought maybe I should wake you, since it’s two o’clock and we’re just closing for the afternoon. Raymond thought you should have your sleep.”

“Two o’clock!” I said. “I’ve only just this minute woken up.”

“Well get dressed and come down and have a bit of breakfast, and tell us what’s going on,” she said, and thankfully went off and left me to dress.

I put on the navy dress again. It remained remarkably uncrumpled, but no nicer. The white sweater was lost, left in the Bermans’ spare bedroom.

The stairs led down to a friendly kitchen I vaguely remembered passing through the night before on the way to bed. The fire was burning brightly and a copper kettle was singing over it. I remembered the kettle from my childhood. My mother smiled and poured the boiling water into a brown teapot as I came in. “I remember that kettle,” I said.

“It was my grandmother’s,” she said. “It’s one of the very few things I took. You must think I was awful, abandoning you like that, and you so small, but you don’t know what it was like. Raymond would have had you too, he wanted to, but your father was that fond of you.”

“It was a long time ago,” I said, awkwardly, standing on the bottom step. “It hurt terribly at the time, but worse things have happened since.”

I took another step down into the kitchen, and she handed me a cup of tea, in a proper cup and saucer with pink roses all over it, clearly her best china. I was touched. “It means a lot that you came to me, when you needed someone,” she said, not looking at me. “Raymond made me see that last night.”

“I hope I haven’t brought trouble with me,” I said.

“Well, you’d better tell us what you have brought. Raymond!” she called, raising her voice. “Come in here now!” She lowered her voice again. “He thought we ought to have a minute on our own, first, but I want him to know all about it. He might know what to do. He’s very clever, is Raymond.”

“I can see he’s been good to you,” I said, sitting on the bench beside the kitchen table.

“He thinks the sun shines out of my arse,” she said. “And to be honest with you, I think the same about him, though I’m not silly
enough to let him know it. Always been that way, ever since we first met. I didn’t mean to trample all over you and your father, but I couldn’t let him go.”

Raymond came in through the door from the bar. “Now, now, Irene, I thought you’d got that all out of the way,” he said, catching the last of this.

“We have,” I assured him quickly.

“Well,” he said, sitting down and taking a cup of tea my mother handed him. “Are you ready to tell us what all this is about? Your eyes were about ready to cross last night.”