The Yellow Glass (20 page)

“Nurse,” I tried calling, but it came out as a
squeak.
 
“Nurse!”

“What’s the matter, Mr Arkonnen?”
 
The matron poked her head through the
curtain.

“Johnny Ray,” I panted.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Danger.
 
Terrible danger . .”

“Now, now, what’s all this?”
 
She bustled in and picked up the chart at the
end of my bed.
 
“Doctor must have
overdone the morphine.
 
Try to control
yourself, Mr Arkonnen.”

“No!!”
 
I cried,
shocking myself with the vehement way it shot out of my mouth.
 
“You don’t understand!
 
Rosa’s in mortal danger . .”
 

I was rocking about in the bed, trying to get the hurt
parts of me to work, so I could get up and out and warn Rosa Stone about
something.
 
I hadn’t the faintest what it
was that I’d got to warn her about, but that didn’t matter.
 
I just knew that I’d got to get out of that
hospital.

“Dear, dear, what a fuss!”
 
Matron grasped my shoulders and held me down
with washer-woman arms. “You’re not leaving St Thomas’ hospital and that’s all
there is to it.
 
You’ve got two broken
arms and two broken legs and you need to hold still, or you’ll do more
damage.
 
Do you hear me?”

I stopped writhing about on learning this.
 
Two broken arms and two broken legs?
 
I’d got a full deck.
 
It took some adjusting to, but, then again .
. . at least I hadn’t broken my neck.

“There, now that’s better.
 
The painkillers have got you hallucinating,
Mr Arkonnen, but there’s no need to worry.
 
You just lie still and get some rest and we’ll lower the dose to make
you more comfortable.”

I stopped panting and closed my eyes, while she re-positioned
my sheet and blanket over the metal contraption that arched over my bandaged
arms and legs.
 
There’s no need to worry,
I repeated to myself.
 
I just needed to
lie still and get some rest and banish all thoughts of Acker Bilk, or Johnny
Ray, or - more disturbingly - Rosa Stone.

——

 
After I’d waved a couple of pound notes under
his nose, the tattooed landlord proved most helpful.
 
Reg was a regular jazz nut and had been
haunting the Black Box during the whole of the two years that it had been open for
business.
 
He came in after work and
drank pints of best - the local Anchor bitter, usually - and was often on his
own, which was how the landlord knew a bit about him.
 
Reg liked a natter and he’d hang about at the
bar.
 
Like most northerners, he was a
friendly enough feller, was Reg, and he’d told the landlord that he was in the
warehousing business and owned a big warehouse down by the river, right by that
new Bankside Power Station
[39]
.
 
He’d mentioned a wharf, too and the landlord
reckoned he shipped some of his goods up and down river, himself.
 
Had he said what it was he traded in?
 
If he had, he’d forgotten.
 
All he knew was that Reg’s route home of an
evening took him down The Cut, and that’s when he’d stop in for a pint and to
catch whatever was on.
 
The landlord
scratched at his tattoos, thoughtfully: an amorphous mess of dark blue, a chain
of blurred anchors suggesting the Merchant Navy.
 

Reg had introduced his nephew to the landlord the
first time they’d come in together, but the lad had been in before with a crowd
of mates.
 
The nephew was a big,
fair-haired lad who looked like he hadn’t two pennies to rub together.
 
A be-bopper.
 
Probably chuffed to be stood a beer or two by his uncle.
 
Night before last, the lad had come in with a
bit of stuff with long black hair, hard to miss because she looked like she’d
raided the fancy dress box.
 
Quite a
stunner, in her own way; he’d wondered whether she might be an actress because
they got a few of those every now and again, being so close to the Vic.

“Ahem,” I interrupted.
 
“That’s my
niece
you’re
talking about.”

“Is it?”
 
His
canny eyes narrowed.
 
“Well, you asked, squire.”

“I don’t suppose you ever overheard any conversations
between Reg Arkonnen and his nephew?
 
Anything you’ve got might help.”

The landlord stopped scratching his tattoos and folded
his arms.

“Here . .” he said.
 
“Who did you say you was working for?”

“For the Government.
 
Civil Service.”

He glanced at Jay Tamang.

“Chink Civil Service, is it?”

“Her Majesty’s Civil Service,” Tamang replied, evenly.

“Take anybody nowadays.
 
This country’s going to the dogs.”

“Right . .” I said, replacing the pound notes in my
wallet and slipping it back into my jacket pocket.
 
“Time we were off.”

“Here . . where’s my money?”

I ignored him and ushered Tamang out of the door.

“Now, where did I put the car?”
 
I scanned the street; a desolate, broken-down
slum of a street.

“Do you think he will come after us, Mr Upshott?”

“I rather hope the villain does, Tamang.
 
I don’t know about you, but I’m all for a fight
every now and again.
 
It clears the air
and I could certainly do with that today.
 
Besides . .” I located the car and beckoned him over, “ . . I’m with a
Gurkha.”

Tamang laughed:

“I think I shall enjoy working in the field with you,
Mr Upshott.”

“Really?”
 
We
got into the car.
 
“I shouldn’t speak too
soon, if I were you.”

 
Bankside Power Station was only
half-finished, although the half that was up and running was busy manufacturing
electricity for the nation.
 
Almost
everything around it, however, was much more than half dead.
 
There were rotting bits of wharf and derelict
warehouses lining the river and the narrow streets that had somehow escaped
Jerry’s attention had dilapidated iron walkways and covered bridges running
above them, obliterating any sense of sky.
 
Some post-war housing had been plonked among the desolation,
arbitrarily, so that children ran between the neat playgrounds behind the
Estates - with their large notices forbidding ball-playing - and straight onto
bombed-out wastelands, littered with broken glass.
 
Down by the Thames, the old Anchor brewery
sat foursquare between Southwark and London Bridges, belching out smoke and the
air was rank with the stink of filthy river-water, stewed hops and malt.

“No post-war miracles here,” I observed.

“How will we find Mr Arkonnen’s warehouse?”
 

Tamang had his head stuck out of the window and was
taking note of everywhere we passed.
 
I
could see that he was taking his duties extremely seriously.

“I’m not exactly sure.
 
Let me find somewhere to park and we can do a recce.”

“Why don’t we ask there?”
 
He pointed to the Anchor pub.

“You haven’t had enough of talking to publicans?”

“If Reg Arkonnen drinks Anchor beer, then, surely, he
must drink there sometimes, too.
 
So near
to his place of work.
 
So
convenient.
 
He cannot always be
listening to jazz.”

“Do you know, that’s not a half-bad idea,
Tamang!”
 
I secured the hand brake.
 
“You sit there and wait for me.
 
I won’t be a tick.”

——

 
I’d just finished a tasty square of pink
sponge pudding with pink custard and was going to ask the pretty nurse if she’d
fetch my tobacco tin out for me.
 
I
didn’t see how I’d get into the corridor to smoke, but just sniffing the stuff
would be better than nothing.
 
Better
than a slap in the face with a wet fish, as my Gran used to say!
 
As Rosa Stone probably
still
said . . . Damn, I’d got to stop thinking about that
girl.
 
Even with the pain that I’d begun
to feel now they’d taken my drip away, I couldn’t stop thinking about her;
worrying about her, for no good reason I could come up with.
 

I tried to block her out by going over the A-Z of
Conspiracy Theories that I was compiling for the mag, and considering
candidates for H.
 
British Honduras
seemed a definite possibility; all those old colonial outposts that we hung
onto for dear life were fertile ground for conspiracy theories . . oh,
good
, here was a nurse.
 
An even younger nurse than the other
one.
 
It looked like they were recruiting
them straight from the first forms of the secondary moderns these days.

“Afternoon, Mr Arkonnen.
 
Stretcher here for you.”

“Stretcher?
 
Am
I going somewhere, then?”

“Yeah,” she smiled and I caught a glimpse of chewing gum,
“you’re off to another ward ‘cos they need the bed.”

This was news to me . . still, I might be able to get
a sneaky smoke out of it.

“Hey, don’t suppose we could stop off in the corridor
for a quick smoke, could we?”

“’Spect so,” she said, laughing.

“Only you’d have to roll it and stick it in my
mouth.
 
What with my broken arms and
all.”

“No skin off my nose.
 
Here,” she motioned to one of the hospital porters who’d followed her in
through my curtains, “you take one side and ‘e can take the other.
 
One, two, three and up!”

It hurt like hell, but they man-handled me onto the
stretcher, and hoisted me onto a hospital trolley. The pain didn’t subside once
I was lying down, but carried on, gathering momentum like it had a lot more to
give.
 
I felt like a crab turned on its
back, arms and legs rigid in the air and vulnerable underbelly exposed.
 
I can tell you, I went right off the idea of
a cigarette; it was much more important that I got straight back into bed.

“Let’s split,” said the nurse and they swung me
through the curtains and into the sunny ward and ran with me through the door.

“Can we slow down a bit, please?”
 
I gasped, feeling like I might be about to
pass out.

Nobody answered me; they were too busy flinging me
down the corridors like I was a sack of potatoes at Covent Garden.

“Please!”
 
I
shouted, as hard as I could make it, and faces turned to see what was up.

But we carried on, barging through a group of
somebody’s relations, so that they had to leap out of our way and clamp
themselves against the hospital walls.

“Stop!” I shouted.
 
“Help!
 
Somebody hel . .”

I just had time to see the young nurse smile down at
me, her fair pony-tail swinging forward as she leant over and clamped a wodge
of cotton wool over my mouth, before I lost consciousness.

——

 
I knocked on the driver’s window and Tamang
rolled it down.

“Caribbea Wharf,” I announced.
 
“Off beginning of Southwark Bridge, concealed
steps down to Bear Gardens.
 
We’re
practically there.
 
Chop, chop!”

We found the steps and climbed down, arriving on the
shore of the Thames.
 
Patches of oil
stained the ground and broken groynes poked up, haphazardly, here and
there.
 
It was low tide and the brackish
river had duly delivered assorted oddments to dry land: a rusting doorknob, a
mouldy hat, a variety of shoes and many fragments of green glass.
 
A pigeon picked over them like a connoisseur
in an art gallery.

“Is this a wharf, Mr Upshott?
 
I am not familiar with them.”
 

“I suppose so.
 
Long past its heyday, but . . you see that barge moored over there?”

I pointed out a long, steel-hulled London barge,
flat-bottomed enough to allow it to navigate in shallow water, moored up to an
ancient wooden construction.
 
Dilapidated, weed-encrusted poles protruded from the brown river, none
standing true, all on their last legs.