Maybe the newspapers had said that every man-jack in that retreating army had fought to the end. The Pioneer Corps, the office staffs, the cooks were supposed to have held the Germans back with their bare fists. Perhaps they did, but he didn’t. He’d had enough of the British Army. He had waited for the Germans and then given himself up. “I’m a member of the British Union of Fascists,” he had told them, and that did the trick.
Why should he care what sort of tripe they gave him to read into the microphone? He was getting a hundred marks a day and all found, and besides, it gave him a tremendous feeling of power to be able to talk to millions of his fellow-countrymen. Not every man could do that, especially if he was the son of a reprieved murderer.
“Ave another sandwich,” whispered the fat woman at his side. “The jury’s going out in a minute. I’ve eaten all I want.”
He took another sandwich, nodded his thanks. She wasn’t a bad old stick, he thought. Give her a bit of a shake-up if she knew who he was. He smiled thinly, bit into the bread.
“Want feeding up, that’s wot you want,” the woman said after the Judge had disappeared through the door behind the bench. “Proper skeleton if you’ll pardon me being personal. Was you a prisoner of war?”
Ellis hesitated, then gave way to the temptation to boast.
“Belsen,” he mumbled, his mouth full, his eyes searching her fat, good-natured face. He was pleased to see her expression change to awe and horror.
“Cor luv me!” she exclaimed. “Belsen! I saw it on the pitchers. Was you there?”
He tore at the bread with his sharp little teeth, nodded.
“Well, I never,” she said, seemingly unable to get over it, “Fancy you being there. You poor thing, you.”
Ellis shrugged, looked away. Perhaps it was unwise to say too much to this woman. He looked round the court, wondered how long the jury would be before they made up their minds.
“Did they torture yer?” the woman asked, plucking at his sleeve.
He suddenly hated her morbid curiosity and turned on her: “Shut up,” he snarled. “I’m not talking about it.”
She looked disappointed, a little hurt. He could feel her eyes on him, but he looked straight in front of him.
The jury returned into court at four o’clock. They had taken twenty minutes to arrive at the verdict.
While Ellis waited he thought of the prisoner, tried to imagine how he would feel in his place. As the minutes passed he became more and more tense, until he had to make an effort to control his trembling limbs.
The door behind the bench opened and a small group of aldermen and sheriffs in their robes passed through, standing aside then to bow to the Judge who entered, carrying in his hand a pair of white gloves and that strip of black cloth known as the black cap.
The prisoner came up the stairs at the back of the dock. Ellis couldn’t look at him. He felt it would be like looking into a mirror.
The Clerk of the Court asked: “Members of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?”
Ellis leaned forward, sweat beads on his forehead, his teeth bared.
“Guilty.”
Twenty minutes to make up their minds to send a man to his death. Twenty minutes! Ellis snarled at them, a red mist of rage before his eyes. It could have so easily been him up there facing the Judge.
The fat woman, thinking he was unnerved, put her hand comfortingly on his arm.
The Judge pronounced the sentence of death.
“Serves ‘im right,” the woman said in a hushed voice, moved in spite of herself. “ ‘E was a traitors.”
The Chaplain said, “Amen.”
Ellis gritted his teeth. If they caught him, they’d hang him, too. But he wasn’t a traitor! They’d treated him badly, and he had got his own back; that’s all it was. Besides, if they’d listened to him, London would never have been bombed. He had told them over and over again to get rid of Churchill and to make friends with Germany. But the fools hadn’t listened and now London was in ruins, and they would call him a traitor.
He stood up as the court began to clear. He and the fat woman were carried along in the crowd towards the exit.
Suddenly he could contain himself no longer. “It’s murder!” he burst out furiously. “They never gave him a chance.” He was so angry that he didn’t realise that he was speaking in his normal voice.
The fat woman stared at him, puzzled. Somewhere she had heard that voice before.
A policeman also heard the voice. He looked sharply round the court. The sea of faces moving towards the exit meant nothing to him, and yet he was sure that Edwin Cushman had spoken those words.
While he stood hesitating, not knowing what he should do, the man in the shabby brown suit slipped through the doorway and moved quickly down the corridor, out of sight.
CHAPTER TWO
The building was dark and cool after the fierce heat of the street; it was silent, too, dirty and dilapidated. There was no lift, and the big sign on the wall on which were painted the various names of the firms housed in the building had more vacant spaces on it than names.
Ellis caught a glimpse of the girl’s legs as she walked up the stairs to the second floor. He was plodding up the first flight, and had heard her wooden heels clicking on the stone stairs before he saw her. By leaning over the banister and staring up, he caught sight of her legs in lisle stockings, the hem of her grey skirt and a flash of white underwear under the full skirt.
He quickened his pace, curious to see what the girl looked like. The two of them appeared to be alone in this big, silent building, and the only sound that came to him was the click of her wooden heels.
On the third-floor landing, he caught a glimpse of her as she rounded the bend in the corridor. She was wearing a grey flannel skirt and a short blue coat. Her little hat was shapeless: the kind of hat you’d expect to find in a dustbin. Although he only caught a glimpse of her he was immediately aware of her desperate poverty.
He hesitated as he looked at the directory sign on the wall.
The Deaf and Dumb Friendship League
appeared to have offices round the bend of the corridor if you could believe the painted hand pointing in that direction. He walked on, rounded the bend as the girl disappeared through a doorway, half-way down the passage.
When Ellis reached this door, he found lettered on it in flaked black paint on pebbled glass:
The Deaf and Dumb Friendship League
; and in smaller letters the legend: Manager: H. Whitcombe. He turned the knob and went into a small narrow room with two windows, a shabby little typewriter desk, closed, a number of dusty filing cabinets, no curtains to the windows and a carpet so threadbare that you wouldn’t notice the rips in it unless you tripped over one.
A counter divided the room into two, and in its turn the counter was divided by four wooden screens. They reminded Ellis of the partitions in the pledging office of a pawnbroker’s shop.
The girl in the grey skirt was standing at one of the partitions, her back to Ellis. He stared at her, wishing to see her face, but as she did not look round, he had to be content to eye her square, narrow shoulders, her straight back and her legs which had already attracted his attention. Rather to his surprise he found himself trying to see beyond the shabby clothes at what he was sure was a beautifully proportioned body. Her legs vaguely excited him in spite of the darned lisle stockings and the down-at-the-heel shoes.
Except for the girl and Ellis the room was empty. He took up a position at the partition next to the one at which she was standing and waited. The partition hid the girl but he could see her hands resting on the ink-stained counter.
They were small, strong hands; brown and smooth; the fingers long, the thumbs waisted, the nails almond-shaped. He looked at his own hands, short-fingered, ugly, the nails bitten to the quicks, knuckles grimed, and he grimaced.
A door of the inner office across the far side of the room opened, and an elderly man came out. He wore a black suit with high lapels and too many buttons down the front. He had been fat at one time, but now he had wasted, and loose skin hung from his jowls giving him a look of a depressed bloodhound. His sharp, black eyes, under heavy eyebrows, darted to the right and left; shifty, suspicious eyes. He nodded first to the girl, then to Ellis. There was nothing friendly about the nod.
He went immediately to the girl.
“There’s nothing for you,” he said, obviously anxious to get rid of her. “Perhaps next week. It’s no use coming like this day after day. Jobs don’t grow on trees.”
“I can’t wait until next week,” the girl said. Her voice was flat, expressionless, soft. “I haven’t any money.”
The elderly man, who Ellis guessed rightly to be Mr Whitcombe, the manager, shrugged. It seemed he had heard that tale so often it had come to mean nothing to him. “I can’t help that,” he said, impatiently. “There’s nothing for you. I have a note of your name and address. If I hear of anything I’ll drop you a card.”
“You keep saying that,” the girl said in her toneless voice. “It’s three weeks now since I gave you the forty shillings. You must do something for me. You said when you took the money you were certain to fix me up in a few days.”
Mr Whitcombe’s face changed colour. He looked furtively at Ellis, then back to the girl. “You be careful what you’re saying,” he returned, lowering his voice. “Forty shillings? I don’t know what you mean. What forty shillings?”
“You said you’d find me a job that didn’t need a reference if I gave you forty shillings,” the girl said, her voice tight with emotion. “It was a loan, you said, because you wanted to get straightened out. I gave it to you because I didn’t have any references.”
“You’re day-dreaming,” Mr Whitcombe said, embarrassed. Wait a minute. Let me see what this gentleman wants. You really shouldn’t say such things before witnesses. I took no money from you.” He moved along the counter until he was opposite Ellis.
“What is it?” he asked, his uneasy eyes searching Ellis’s face.
“I want work.” Ellis spelt the letters out in deaf and dumb signs with his fingers.
A look of relief came to Whitcombe’s face. He had thought that Ellis might have overheard what the girl had said. His own fingers sprang into activity. Fluently and swiftly they spelt out words, too fast for Ellis to follow.
“Slower,” Ellis’s fingers replied, “I am a beginner.”
Mr Whitcombe lifted his shoulders irritably, opened a drawer under the counter, took out a form. He laid it before Ellis, then moved back to the girl.
While Ellis was reading the form, he heard the girl say, “If you can’t give me a job, I want my money back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr Whitcombe returned. “Why do you keep on about money? I wouldn’t take money from you.”
“But you did,” the girl protested, “and I want it back. I’ll tell your people. You offered to find me a job without references . . .”
“Stop it,” Mr Whitcombe said, rapping the counter with his bony knuckles. “Who’d believe such a story? You’re a thief, aren’t you? Just out of jail. Who’d believe you? Be off or I’ll send for the police.”
“I want my money back,” the girl repeated, a catch in her voice. “I haven’t a penny. Nothing. Don’t you understand? I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“I can’t help that,” Mr Whitcombe said. “It’s no good going on and on. Something may come in. But if you want me to help you, you mustn’t say you lent me money. You mustn’t tell lies, you know. It never gets anyone anywhere.”
“I did lend you money,” the girl said, suddenly angry. “You said it was a loan, but it wasn’t. It was a bribe.”
Mr Whitcombe suddenly chuckled. He felt quite safe now he had convinced himself that Ellis couldn’t overhear what was being said. “They wouldn’t believe you, you little fool. No one would believe you. It’s your word against mine. Be off with you! Do you think anyone wants to employ a deaf jailbird? Ask yourself. Think about it. Would you? Go away! and if you come here again making out I took money from you, I’ll call a policeman.”
Ellis saw the girl’s hands clench into tight little fists. They beat softly on the counter, then disappeared.
He drew back as she turned to the door but he was too late to see her face. He watched her walk to the door, open it. Her narrow shoulders wilted, her shabby little hat was like a halo of despair.
The door closed.
Mr Whitcombe grinned to himself, then moved along the counter once more to Ellis.
“Have you filled in the form?” he asked with his fingers.
“The filthy rat,” Ellis was thinking. “That’s what they did to me before I learned to take care of myself.” He had read the form and saw at once that he wouldn’t get work here. The form stated that three personal references were required before an applicant was considered. He thought of the girl. If he told this old twister he couldn’t supply references he would ask for money, and then do nothing for him. He was disappointed, furious, and he leaned over the counter, glaring at Mr Whitcombe savagely.
“I heard, you swine,” he said. “I heard everything.”
He hit Mr Whitcombe across his loose skinny face. The old man gave a choking cry, staggered, fell down behind the counter. Ellis didn’t bother to see what had happened to him. He stepped to the door, opened it, glanced up and down the passage, then ran quickly down the stairs.
He knew he shouldn’t have hit the old man, but the temptation had been too strong for him. He thought of the girl. It was a pity she couldn’t have seen what had happened. It would have done her good. She had paid forty shillings and had got nothing for it except empty promises. He was surprised to find that he was sorry for the girl, that she interested him. It was an odd sensation. For many years now women had meant nothing to him, but this girl attracted him, and the fact that she had been exploited forged a bond between them.
As he descended the last flight of stairs, the full force of his predicament flashed through his mind. He had not, until now, admitted to himself how much he had been relying on the
Deaf and Dumb Friendship League
to get him a job. Their advertisement had completely taken him in. Deaf and dumb people urgently needed in many spheres of business, the advertisement had read. The Friendship League was in touch with all important business executives, and work was found for trained or untrained applicants afflicted by deafness or who were deaf and dumb. And they had left an old twister like that in charge!