Authors: Peter Bradshaw
They came out of the corridor, through the bar and back into the club. The point of the gun was sometimes pressed directly onto one of her vertebrae, and sometimes into the space in between.
Literally everyone in the club was now attempting to dance, sloppy and careless.
Driberg came over. He had Colin with him and another boy, a different boy, slight, dark, with a sleepy-lidded look and a thin fuzz of a moustache.
‘My dear!’ Driberg called genially to her. ‘Where have you been? Do you want to come with us? We’re going to the Brown Bomber in Wardour Street. I am a member, you know.
They serve a rather tasty bacon sandwich. Pickled onions. It’s so much less formal than this.’
A man in his late sixties wearing a vivid yellow fright wig lurched forwards between them and attempted to vomit on the floor.
‘You see,
this
is what I am talking about,’ said the dark, slight boy who had a slight Spanish accent. Colin nodded, but continued to look at Elizabeth.
The entire group moved a pace or two to the left to dissociate themselves from this man. Elizabeth felt the gun continue to jab into her spine. Driberg noticed how Mr Ware seemed to stay
unnaturally close behind her back.
‘Are you ... leaving us, Lil?’ he presumed to ask.
‘Yes, I think it’s past my bedtime,’ replied Elizabeth in a voice no one could hear. But they saw her smile and nod.
‘And where are you off to, old boy?’ Driberg said to Mr Ware, more sharply. ‘And why on earth have you got that kit on?’
‘I’m off myself,’ he returned. ‘Thought I might have a stroll up Hyde Park way. I was going to get Lil here a cab outside the Criterion.’
This seemed to satisfy the assembled company. Elizabeth felt Mr Ware remove the Luger from her back, and it had presumably gone back inside his waistband as he gestured broadly with his free
hand around, but not touching, her shoulders, guiding her to the exit.
‘Goodbye!’ he said. ‘See you in the morning, just when day is dawning!’
Elizabeth saw that now was her chance. He had had to put the gun away so that no one would see it. He had no power over her, but once they were out on the street, with no one else around, she
would have no chance. He could do what he liked then. She would have to act now, right now. But do what? Scream? Cry out?
The drunk man with the yellow wig groaned, got to his feet, and began to stumble for the door by the bar, undoubtedly heading for the lavatory. Mr Ware’s hand was gently on her shoulder
again. Now. Do something now.
‘There’s Noël,’ she said, suddenly. ‘Noël!’
Coward had appeared out of the crowd, now really holding a glass of champagne. Her high, yelping monosyllable should have been all but inaudible, but Coward’s extra-sensory awareness of
social importance made him stop and break off a conversation he was having with two other younger men. He approached and addressed her with rather more of the facetious gallantry than had seemed
appropriate earlier in the evening.
‘Ah, Lil,’ he said, bowing, ‘we were thinking of going to the Brown Bomber Club. One was hoping to discover how it got its name. One has the most appalling suspicions. Perhaps
you would like to come along?’
‘Oh,’ said Elizabeth weakly, ‘Yes, thank you, Noël, I—’
But from the other side of the room, and behind Coward, Elizabeth could now see Katharine, with her bruised and battered face. It looked like a boy’s face, or a man’s face, and
Elizabeth could see where the tooth was missing: it was the swelling and distension of her cheek which revealed this gap.
Elizabeth remembered how shocked she had been when she saw this injury in the ladies’ room, and how quickly and thoroughly she had suppressed the shock, but now remembered something else,
another experience which she had suppressed, or which she had allowed events to suppress for her. She remembered kissing Katharine. She remembered how her tongue had found its way into that mouth;
she had tasted gin and inhaled the intimate fume of cigarettes which she associated with her father. Elizabeth had probed Katharine’s teeth with her tongue. She had not especially meant to,
but there seemed no other osculatory way to behave while their mouths were locked together. It was like making conversation. The top row of Katharine’s teeth really were very close to her top
lip. Philip’s teeth were not, in fact, like that. She did not remember feeling them with her tongue or lips when they kissed, although there was actually the same tobacco smell. Was that what
she was remembering? If she kissed Katharine now, Elizabeth thought, her tongue would feel that broken stump of a tooth, feel it as a flinty point or as something hollow, like a straw.
Elizabeth felt woozy. Her field of vision seemed to have a metallic shimmer or glitter that she could taste. She wondered if she should faint – pretend to faint, or really faint, and that
would get her out of a jam. And yet the realisation that this might indeed be a good idea, seemed to cure her passing infirmity. She no longer felt in the slightest like fainting. An ingrained
refusal to give in, a determination to buck up, stopped it happening. As for pretending to pass out, it was somehow utterly beyond her as well.
Noël gently repeated his offer about the Brown Bomber club, and Elizabeth numbly realised that a loud and sweeping acceptance, a ringing and comically imperious ‘Oh yes! Take me away
from here!’ – the sort of line Margaret could probably deliver – would solve all her problems at once. But she just couldn’t do it. As if in a dream, she couldn’t
speak. Having first assented, the momentum of what was happening seemed unstoppable. She smiled and shook her head at Coward, who graciously inclined his own in return, taking it on the chin.
After all, this man had a gun, didn’t he? Everyone knew, from films and suchlike, that when someone produced a gun you had to do what they said. Elizabeth, muddled, had quite forgotten
about her conviction that he would be afraid to use the gun now.
There was something else, too. Elizabeth turned Noël Coward down because she was accustomed to declining, to refusing, gracefully shying away when members of the public asked her questions,
or made approaches of any sort, and this instinct made her smile, and shake her head and look down. In any case, to reveal to these people, people with whom she had crassly attempted to mix
socially, that she had put herself in this position – it was unthinkable. No, once they were out on the street, she would hail a cab. No, she would hail a policeman. She would hail a cab
and
a policeman. She would run away. Elizabeth could see Katharine talking to Ginnie, and Ginnie looking over to them, and then reaching for the telephone on one of the glass shelves behind
the bar. She could feel a weakness and a sagging at the knees, and Mr Ware’s grip across her shoulders grew suddenly tighter.
‘Come on, now.’
They left the Club, out through the throng. Up the steps, through the trapdoor device and back up onto the streets of Soho. The cold air and the noise, the different sort of noise, made
Elizabeth feel nauseous and faint. Now his grip on her elbow was powerfully strong. There were no cabs anywhere.
‘Let’s walk,’ said Mr Ware. He had lit another cigarette; this was clamped in the corner of his mouth, and he had adopted a ventriloquist’s way of talking, looking
straight ahead, hardly moving his lips. What was the point? Nobody was looking at them. Elizabeth’s heart leapt as she saw a policeman approach: a big, cheerful, ruddy face under his
helmet.
‘Evening to you both,’ he said pleasantly, with a slight West Country accent. ‘What are you in your kit for? Don’t you know there’s
not
a war on?’
All three laughed at his playful sally.
‘Oh, I’ve got some properties to inspect, chief. My work is never done.’
‘You’re a glutton for it!’
‘Certainly!’
‘And what about you, miss?’ he asked, easily. ‘Have you got to help?’
‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. Here was a policeman. Exactly what she wanted, and yet when she opened her mouth to speak, the words would not come.
‘Well, keep out of trouble. Good night all.’
He stalked off up northward, in the direction of Oxford Street. They walked on down Shaftesbury Avenue and into Piccadilly Circus: a young woman in uniform, still neatly turned out, and someone
from the ARP, in his vivid white helmet and kitbag. They attracted attention here and there. People called out to them, but Mr Ware maintained his grip and Elizabeth could still feel the butt of
his gun in her back. Two women walked past, gobbling fish and chips from a newspaper.
‘I’m hungry,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Come on. Just keep moving.’
‘I’m hungry. I’ve got to have some food, or I think I’m going to faint.’
‘Didn’t you have anything at the club?’
Passers-by probably thought they were sweethearts, or a married couple.
‘There wasn’t anything.’
Mr Ware and Elizabeth were now actually standing outside an Italian café.
‘I am going to faint. I haven’t eaten anything for hours. Not since lunch.’
Mr Ware looked at his watch, and then frowningly at Elizabeth.
‘All right. We’ll stop in here. You can have a sandwich and a cup of tea. Something like that. Ten minutes, maximum.’
A listless older woman and a young girl, so similar she had to be a granddaughter, stood behind the counter. Elizabeth sat at one of the tables, and looked around at the other customers. A young
man, unshaven, dirty, hunched over a single cup of coffee. He did not look up. Another group of young men, with what appeared to be the remnants of facepaint and eye makeup gathered, giggling among
themselves, at a further table.
What on earth was she going to do? Should she call the police? Yes, surely, that was what she must do. He wouldn’t dare use his gun now, in broad view of everyone. She should call the
police, right now. Elizabeth imagined her thin, scared, cracked voice suddenly breaking the low, grumbling quiet. She imagined her desperate scream for help. Would these people help her? Would they
recognise her? If they did, might it not actually lessen her chances of being helped? People would be astonished, unbelieving. They would not credit that it was up to them to protect their future
Queen. They would not believe that someone of her class could possibly get herself into this situation. They might think it was some sort of stunt or hoax. Each of them, individually, would think
that it was someone else’s responsibility to do something about it. Miserably, frantically, her thoughts running like a hamster on a wheel, Elizabeth realised how paralysed she felt.
Mr Ware was selecting sandwiches and a bun. The woman behind the counter was preparing a pot of tea for two.
What did he want her for? Elizabeth thought about this question for the first time, realised that she did not know and how scared this thought made her.
Mr Ware was putting the sandwiches, the bun and the tea onto a tray, and preparing to carry them over himself, apparently forestalling the woman’s suggestion that the young girl should do
it.
Something about this whole situation was familiar to her. Quite aside from the danger and the squalor of the situation into which she had got herself so badly messed up, a long buried memory was
beginning to stir. Could it be that she visited this café long ago, as a child? Or a café like this?
Mr Ware arrived at their table, his tray trembling and rattling with the weight. With a
chink
, he placed it heavily down.
‘Right. There you are.’
He sat down opposite her, sweating. His ARP helmet was now tipped back on his head, in a parody of rakishness.
‘I’ll be mother, shall I?’
He poured the tea, and shoved her sandwiches towards her.
‘There you are. Chicken. Very nice. Actually cost me more than I thought. But never mind. I’m going to be quids in, after tonight. You’re going to help.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Elizabeth finally got the question out, after much effort.
‘What are
we
going to do, you mean!’ he said smugly. ‘You and I are going to do some war work, my dear. The last bit of war work of the war. What do you think
this
is about?’ He tapped the helmet with a forefinger, and then lit another of his odd-shaped cigarettes.
‘What sort of war work?’ Elizabeth asked, now hoping to humour him.
‘Important war work. Vital war work. Home front work. Very important to the maintenance of civilian morale.’
‘Civilian morale?’
‘My morale, darling, my morale, and I’m a civilian. This work for the ARP has got me into some pretty dangerous situations, you know. Well, I don’t suppose you do know. Your
sort just swan about, in no danger at all.’
‘That’s not true.’
Mr Ware’s manner reverted to his previous cold scorn.
‘Listen to me, Lil,’ he said. ‘People have died in this war. People got killed from Jerry’s bombs here: every night. It’s been bloody chaos. Bloody anarchy.
Nightfall to sunup. Do you think we’ve all been fucking cheery Cockneys getting on with it and whistling while we work and keeping our peckers up? Well, we haven’t. The things
I’ve seen while I’ve been seeing to bombed out houses. While I’ve been pulling dead bodies out of the dust. Women. Children. In that sort of situation, people don’t care.
There’s no law and order.’
Now he took out the Luger and slammed it down on the table, while keeping the flat of his hand on the weapon, partially concealing it. No one else in the café looked up or showed the
slightest interest. Furious rows between men and women were entirely commonplace here.
‘I’ve had to use this a couple of times, and not on Fritz. Had to. Do you think the police were going to help us, in London during the Blitz? We just had to police
ourselves.’
‘What do you mean, use it?’
‘Are you getting cheeky?’
Mr Ware paused, removed his gun from the table, sipped his tea and nibbled the bun, keeping his bloodshot eyes warily and resentfully on Elizabeth.
‘People here have just had to help themselves as best they could. God helps those who help themselves, doesn’t he? And I’ve been helping myself. We all have. Those as could.
Round here, some places got on the end of V-2s. Last one landed only recently. People are still clearing up the mess; the likes of me are clearing it up. D’you know what V-2s are?’