The Blue Last (19 page)

When Benny and Sparky got to the Lodge with the packets of chops and chine, Gemma was sitting on the bench with her doll, waiting. Mrs. MacLeish, the cook, had mentioned a delivery that morning and Gemma had come, as always, to wait by the gate. She took the meat and started off to the kitchen, calling over her shoulder she'd come straight back.

Benny climbed up onto the board wedged between the branches of a silver beech and waited. True to her word, Gemma was back before a minute had passed. Breathlessly, she asked, “What's chin? I'm not eating something's chin.” She climbed up and sat down across from Benny in the tree seat.

“It ain't—isn't—‘chin'; it's ‘c-h-i-n-e'; it's some part of the pig, it's between his shoulder blades . . . I think I'll stop eating meat. I can't stand it that pig is slaughtered just so we can have pork chops and chine. And I can't hardly stand Mr. Gyp anymore.”

“I hate him. He's covered with blood. I wonder if butchers hate animals. I wonder if that's why they get to be butchers.”

Snowball, Katherine Riordin's cat, had come along to annoy Sparky. Snowball hissed.

“Gyp doesn't like Sparky. I can tell that.”

Gem shook out her black hair so that it caught a flash of sunlight. “I'm not going to eat meat anymore.” She said this as if Benny hadn't said it first. “A policeman was here yesterday.”

“He's the same one that came to the bookshop.”

“He didn't have a uniform on. It was probably his day off.”

“He's a detective. They don't wear uniforms.”

“Well, he didn't have a gun either.”

“They don't carry guns.” Benny wasn't sure this was true, but he said it as if he were. He took this line with most things he said for uncertainty never got you anywhere.

Gem was removing the doll's bonnet and studying its head. “But if there's a fight, they could get killed if they don't have guns.”

“Police think carrying a gun only makes things worse, it makes the criminals more likely to shoot.” That, he thought, was a really good idea. Maybe he'd read it somewhere.

“If he doesn't have a gun, how can he fight back if someone tries to shoot
me
again?”

Benny looked up through the breeze-shivered leaves of this big tree and thought further: this detective from New Scotland Yard hadn't simply dismissed the danger Gem was in. Benny frowned, concentrating on that. But Gemma—why Gemma? Why would someone want to get rid of her? Was it because old Mr. Tynedale liked her so much? Someone was afraid he would give away most of his money to Gemma?

“Are you thinking?” Gemma climbed down. “I'm going in to get some holy water and a towel. I'll be right back.”

Benny grunted, only half hearing. Sparky followed Gem. He seemed to want to protect her.

Could Gemma know something she didn't know was important, and someone had to make sure she never realized it and told? Or maybe she
owned
something important . . . Benny sat up straight, recalling a film he had seen (and he hadn't seen many) and looked at the unnamed doll. His eyes widened; maybe the doll wasn't hollow inside. Maybe someone had opened it up to stash jewels or drugs or something and then sewn it up again. Its torso was of firmly stuffed material, even though its head and limbs were hard plastic. He took the doll up, bareheaded without its bonnet, and prodded and prodded; he put it against his ear and shook it.

“
What are you doing to Richard?
Put him down!” Gem dropped the towel she was carrying and climbed up to the seat and took the doll.

Benny stared from her to the doll. “Richard?
Richard?
”

“I ran across it when I was doing the
R
s.” She leaned the doll against her shoulder and patted his back because it had been manhandled so outrageously.

Benny leaned toward her. “The
R
s were things like Ruth, Rachel, Rebecca.
Richard
is a
boy's
name!”

“I
know.
It
is
a boy. I'd never name a girl Richard. We were all wrong, you see.” Gem was not about to take the wrongness on her own shoulders.

“She can't be a boy. Not after all this time!” Benny sloughed himself off the tree and paced around. Sparky woofed. It was too infuriating! What a thing for her to pull! He said, “Look how she's dressed, how she's been dressed all this time, in that long female dress!”

Reasonably, Gemma said, “It's christening clothes. It can be either one. Look—” she raised the doll's dress, pointed to the placidly empty space between its legs. “See? Nothing.”

Benny blushed furiously. Oh, she looked so
smug.

W
aterloo Bridge rose out of the fog lying across the Thames, a sleeker, more stream-lined and diminished version of what it had been during the war. Benny had never seen the old Waterloo Bridge, but Mags had shown him pictures of it in old magazines. Still, it was quite a sight, rising with the lights of the South Bank behind it, and overhead, crowds of stars and an iridescent moon. He stood looking at the starry bridge until Sparky nudged his shoe, nudging him out of his daydreams so as to set about distributing what was in the packet from Mr. Gyp.

That was the way Benny saw Waterloo Bridge, when, after dark, he came back to his makeshift life on the Embankment. It was always dark now in December when he finished work. Often he stayed to help at the Moonraker, for Miss Penforwarden was often behindhand with her work: things like sending out notices of new books she'd acquired to customers on her mailing list. There were a lot of books to be posted to people on that list, names kept on cards in one of those round Rolodex files.

It surprised Benny how much work she had to do, and how uncomplaining she was about it. Aside from dithery looks here and there for something she'd set down and
Now where is it? Pencil, Miss Penforwarden? Behind your ear. Glasses? In your hair.
This amused her more than anything else, and Benny thought that this was because she didn't get angry with herself, didn't put herself down like most people (including Benny) were inclined to do. Benny resolved to be like that himself, as he considered it a real virtue.

Miss Penforwarden wanted to pay Benny for the extra time he put in, but Benny absolutely refused, for he was happy to do it. So in place of pay, she invited him and Sparky to have supper with her on those evenings. He gladly accepted. Dinner with Miss Penforwarden came a couple of nights a week and had got to be a regular event.

Miss Penforwarden talked a lot about the past, about her husband, dead now; about her son, dead, too; about her lovely dog Raven, also dead. Benny felt awful about Miss Penforwarden's misfortunes; it seemed more than one person should be asked to bear. But her life was not presented as a tale of woe, and was all the more woeful for not being. It was matter-of-fact, even humorous; it was the way his own mother had been, keeping always at the forefront what was essential. As literally with her last breath she warned Benny about the National Handbag and managed a laugh.

Benny thought Sparky and he were very lucky; still, he reminded himself they gave as good as they got. As far as Benny knew, they were the only ones here camping under the bridge who actually worked for a living. Not that some of the others wouldn't, given half a chance, but a lot of them used drugs and drank themselves to sleep, where he could understand they'd sooner be than awake. Wakefulness for them provided no ease.

The ones who were clear enough in the head, begged. Benny did not look down on this because his own mother had been forced to beg. Before, they had had a nice life, for Benny recalled a solid house with lots of rooms where he had lived with his mother. She had cooked for this wealthy family. Only, one day saw them not so wealthy; the man of the house had gone bankrupt and staff had been let go.
It's through no fault of your own, Mary; we've just got to tighten up.
Bankrupt. A funny word to him as a little boy. Had the bank erupted? He pictured pound notes flying up and outward, falling again like volcanic ash.

Sparky always got first pick from the package and always chose the beef bone, but still he whiffed them all: chops, bones. He took his bone and trotted off to wherever he gnawed it or buried it, saving it, maybe, for a rainy day.

Here under the bridge was the place to be on rainy days, all right. For the most part they were not friendly people, and Benny could hardly blame them. Twice Benny was robbed before he decided to bank his earnings. He had set up a savings account at NatWest and he now had quite a bit of money in it. He would never have been accepted under the bridge, never, if he hadn't stopped here with his mother for the last few months of her life, so they had got used to Benny. When his mother died, several of them had been very kind and offered him food and gin. Mags, wrapped in bunched and knotted shawls, had held him and rocked him, saying, “Poor lad, poor lad.” It had been and would always be as far as Benny was concerned the worst day of his life.

And, of course, he was also liked for the occasional packets from the butcher. They could cook the chops over a small fire. The bones did well in a watery soup. There was never enough to go around, of course, but still, it helped.

He had a pallet to sleep on. He had got blankets from the Lodge when he found Mrs. MacLeish was going to donate them to Oxfam. He had explained to her that the RSPCA was always looking for blankets and stuff, and that he put in time there as a volunteer; she was perfectly amenable to having the blankets go there (and also told him what a good child he was to be so concerned about the poor animals).

Benny found the Sergeant reading a book with the aid of his flashlight. He had an old terrier that would sit and bark, but in a friendly manner, at Sparky. Sparky woofed back, also in a friendly manner, and Benny imagined it was by way of having a conversation.

“Ah! Young Bernard. What've we today?”

Benny handed him the paper-wrapped chops. The Sergeant would then distribute them according to “rank,” his term, meaning only to whoever was left out last time. Benny preferred not to do the handing out. They knew he brought it, and they certainly appreciated it (and thanked him), but it was better if the Sergeant handed it out himself.

“And is it Mr. Gyp we have to thank for all this?”

It always was, but the Sergeant always said this, making a ritual of handing over the goods.

“The generous Gyp.” The Sergeant winked.

For both of them knew that Gyp was not a generous man.

Tonight, Benny watched the Sergeant walk to the enclosure beneath the bridge, and clutched his cap in his hand. In a rusted oil drum they'd got a fire going with newspapers, cardboard boxes, twigs and maybe some skinny branches they'd picked up in Hyde Park or Green Park. Sometimes the air smelled of pine, and he could imagine himself in the freedom of the north woods somewhere, maybe in the Alps or even in the northern United States.

No one here seemed to have the name he was born with, but instead had exchanged it for a name that better suited. “Mags” was not short for Margaret or Megan, but for “magazines,” which Mags had collected over time and trundled around in her stolen Safeway shopping cart. About the cart she said, “You'll not see many more of these in future. Now, they lock 'em up. What bloody nonsense. Why, what I got here—” she put her hand on the metal cart “—it's gonna be a collector's item! When I went to Safeway awhile back, here they'd fitted the line of carts with this fancy locking thingamajig where you bung in a pound coin—a whole pound, can you bloody believe it?—and then get your pound back at the end at customer service. Don't think I didn't call the store manager over and gave him what-for. Like what if a person's not got a pound coin on him and was I expected to go wait in line just to get a fiver changed? Had one, too. I keep a fiver by me so's they don't think I'm homeless. Disgraceful! I said. ‘I call lockin' up the carts a bloody disgrace! I know there's thieving, but to put your shopper through all this foolery just because a few of these carts gets nicked!' I went on and you bet the women standing there and heard this, they were with me all the way and started in complainin' and gettin' quite shirty with him. He wanted to throw me out, but with all them women, well, he couldn't very well. So what he did was smile his smarmy smile and plug a pound in the slot and Bob's your uncle, I had me cart. I strolled round the produce with it and then when I didn't see him, I just wheeled it out the door.”

“Benny,” Mags had gone on, “one thing you always want to do is stay on the offensive. This is the best life lesson you'll learn. For the second you turn
de
fensive, they'll be circling like vultures, for they know you're dead! Act as if you know you're right. Like, if the Bill comes stickin' its nose in when you're jimmying a lock off a lock-up garage, stand your ground,
stand your ground,
and say you lost your key. When they ask you who you bloody are, you hand 'em a card, any card that you carry around—you should always carry some business cards, don't matter whose. Write a phone number on the back. ‘Sorry, officer (you ijit), I recently had the number changed.' That kind of thing throws the Bill. They ain't total ijits and you might not get away with it, but I 'ave more 'n once. It just throws 'em. I could tell you stories, young Ben—”

That was Mags. Benny had no idea what the Sergeant's birth name was. It was the Sergeant who kept watch over the place under the bridge to make sure it got cleared up every morning or the Bill would have something to say. (Thames police had a station just by Waterloo Bridge, too.) Benny didn't know where the Sergeant stashed the blankets and pallet. But the Sergeant had said that as Benny was working all day and bringing food back for them, the least they could do for him and Sparky was take care of his stuff. Benny could have afforded a bed-sit somewhere nearer his job in Southwark. People were always putting up little cards in Mr. Siptick's window advertising bed-sits and rooms for rent. The problem wasn't money, but age. What landlady would rent to a twelve-year-old boy (and his dog)? What would happen, and he knew it would happen, was the Social. His mum had warned him and so had Mags. For Benny the Social had horns and cloven feet.