dangerous; risky. I know Midge and co would be up for it, but why should I complicate matters by bringing a bint in on the act? A reporter at that? They would curse me black and blue. I decided to start with some small fry and see how she reacted. I picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect me to the news desk of the Daily Trumpet.
“You’ll have to speak up, Danny!”
She sounded like she was at a Rangers match. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. Mama Mary.”
“A nun?”
“Not Mother, Mama Mary. A very different line of business.” And how.
“Where?”
“Soho.”
“So she runs a whorehouse?”
“She calls it her pleasure palace.”
“You’re selling me into slavery?”
“Mama Mary has her fingers on the pulse. If it’s illegal, she knows of it.”
“The Trumpet’s favourite kind of woman.”
We agreed a time and a date, and I hung up, but my smile lasted a while longer.
FOUR
As I roused myself from sleep, I remembered I was seeing Eve today for the first of our jaunts. The notion raised mixed emotions: she was easy on the eye but hard on the brain; the sort of feisty girl that attracts men like moths to a candle, often with the same tragic ending. A woman who can provoke thoughts of murder or suicide. Sometimes both. As I lay there gathering my wits I ran a quick mental check to make sure she wasn’t part of an interesting dream. Nope.
I’d phoned her office twice since our first meeting – once more than I needed to – to confirm arrangements. She was real enough, unless she’d hired a secretary from the spirit world.
I was beginning to believe I was cured. I’d stopped imagining women now. No more ghosts to haunt my waking hours. Doc Thompson had given me the all clear provided I attended a monthly clinic with one of his pals in Harley Street. It saved a long train ride to Wiltshire, but it cost two guineas a go. An arrangement which seemed all wrong: it was paid for by the Army Department, but I still felt like the Doc and his ilk should be paying me for providing grist to their psychiatric mill. I was seeing Professor Haggarty at nine this morning and Eve this afternoon. I would have cancelled the mad Prof, but he was an enthusiastic Irishman who had trouble hearing the word no.
I’m in a rut with my morning rituals. I sat on the edge of the bed and lit a fag and waited for the kick to get me going. It came in a brief buzz of nausea, followed by the first cough, then the head cleared. I picked up my latest Penguin from the floor by my bed and placed it carefully on the end of a growing shelf of orange and green covers. In our house we’d never owned books; we just borrowed from the big Victorian library. But now, at a tanner a go, I can’t get enough of the smart wee paperbacks.
I tossed my pyjamas on the bed and wandered to the sink to light the gas flame under the immerser. While the water was warming I switched on the wireless and watched the light gather behind the dial and the sound of the Home Service break through. I like to listen to the seven o’clock news before switching to music.
I cleared the draining dishes and pot from my supper last night: mash, greens and two of the tiniest lamb chops I’d ever seen. Even the sheep were on rations.
I propped my little mirror against the draining board, put a new blade in the razor, and turned on the tap of the immerser. Then I rinsed my face with warm water, worked up some lather in my shave bowl and scraped my cheeks till they glowed. I lit the gas ring, filled the kettle and put it on. By the time I’d scrubbed myself with the flannel and dried the pool on the floor, the first cuppa was imminent.
Warmth seeped in through the skylight window from the late spring sun. Birds were belting out mating calls. May is a great time to be in London, even a London tattered from five years of pounding by Hermann. It was also a nice switch from this time last year. In ’45 I was hauled out of a Dakota at RAF Brize Norton on a stretcher and whisked off to have my head fixed. A year ago they were taking bone splinters out of my brain and screwing in a piece of aluminium. They joked about it coming from a cannibalised Spitfire, said I’d have my own built-in war memorial. As long as it wasn’t from a Messerschmitt.
I went back to the mirror and massaged a dab of Brylcreem into my hair, kneading the ridge under the skin. I combed the red tangle to careful order so that the scar was hidden, apart from the end that ran down into my left eyebrow. Maybe I should try a kiss-curl.
The newscaster was talking about the meeting of the new United Nations, and what a great step it was towards world peace. I hoped so. We said the same in 1918.
Then he switched to reports about the latest overcrowded boat sailing towards Palestine, with a thousand ragged Jews wailing their way to their promised land.
I couldn’t see why we were standing in their way, after what they’d been through. More stuff about new ration schemes; never enough of anything. Was this what we’d fought for? And was this why we voted old Winston out?
I switched over to the Light Programme, and as I dressed, I joined in the chorus with the Andrews Sisters: “He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B…” and crooned with Frankie, “I’ll never smile again, till I smile with you…”
Then the toast was burning and I was cursing and scraping it into the sink. I coated both slices in thick marge and blackcurrant jam but the taste of carbon still came through. Tea helped, and the second fag of the day had me whistling again. The milk was getting a bit whiffy but good enough for the stray moggy that had adopted me. I filled a saucer and left it on the landing. She must have been waiting; she pounced like I’d tossed her a fresh salmon. I left her lapping and guzzling, and plunged down the steps two at a time. For now I was late.
But it was my lucky morning; the big double-decker was grinding away from my stop as I belted across the road and leaped on the platform. A smooth change at Piccadilly Circus, a number 12 up Marylebone High Street and I was walking through Prof Haggarty’s door just as the clock on his receptionist’s mantelpiece struck the hour.
“How’s that for timing?” I called to Miss V Allardice sitting stiffly behind her newly polished desk with its wooden wedge displaying her initial and surname.
She pursed her lips, and kept typing, pretending not to have noticed me. Levity was frowned on within these serious walls. I suppose she was needed as a counterpoint to Haggarty.
She hit the return, the carriage slid across with an efficient ping and she deigned to look up. She unzipped her lips. “Good morning, sir. It’s Mister McRae, isn’t it? The Professor will call you when he is ready. Please take a seat.”
She expected to be obeyed. She was just the sort you’d need on Judgement Day to keep order. No coffin lids opened until we say so, thank you very much. Everyone lined up in strict order of sinning, worse ones to the rear. I’d barely parked my bum on the hard seat when Haggarty’s voice boomed down the hall.
“Is that McRae? Show him in, Viv!”
Miss Vivienne Allardice flushed at the treacherous revelation of her first name but she kept a steady grip on her sangfroid and her keyboard.
“Professor Haggarty will see you now, Mr McRae. Straight through that door…”
“Thanks, Viv.”
She glared, and the glare turned to horror as I dropped my coat and hat on the chair. She leapt out to hang them up and reinstate order before I got through the door. Haggarty was standing in the corridor like a pub landlord welcoming his first customer after some remodelling by the Luftwaffe.
“How have you been, man? Come in, come in. Take a pew. Isn’t this a glorious day? Better than you and I are used to in our wet native lands, eh?” His great paw dragged me in to his lair. After one session with the Prof, I knew I didn’t have to respond to any of his early questions. I sat down in the big armchair set aside for his victims.
“So, how’ve you been?” he asked again, this time requiring a reply. He settled his great bulk in a double of my
