pals. It caused pursed lips from the gossips hanging over the fences, their Friday hair in curlers and their fat arms folded. “An’ him only a miner. An’ as for her, wi’ her airs and graces…”
But the simple reason was that my mother – whose only air was worry and whose only grace was kindness – clenched her jaw and wouldn’t let me follow my dad down the pits, like his dad and his dad’s dad. Especially after what happened.
So I broke the dynasty. I was going places. Then a bloody wee Austrian with big ideas decided to screw up my life – and here I was.
I began doing exercises, the ones they’d taught me at SOE. They came damned hard at first and left me breathless and dizzy. But they worked; I left the hospital, on my own two legs, freckled and fit in late August. The Doc said he could have got me fixed up as partially disabled and I’d get 11 bob a week. I declined. At that rate, with ciggies in civvy street at two and fourpence a packet, and a bottle of Johnnie Walker at twenty-five bob, I could have got drunk maybe once a year.
Besides, I’d found Raymond Chandler in the library, and his books had pointed the way to fame and fortune. I had the training, did I not? I was ready to face the world and raring to go. All I needed were some juicy cases. And the right hat.
SEVEN
I picked up the bottle, examined it and pushed the cork firmly in. It would be too easy. But then I’d lose another day. I touched the lines Val wrote and took heart. Someone cared. I shook myself, shaved, and washed as best I could in the basin – I have a little gas immerser that gives me enough hot water to keep myself decent. Once a week I go down to the slipper baths at Camberwell and soak until my fingers and toes wrinkle and my skin turns the colour of boiled prawns.
I was still shaky but hungry now, with a great empty place inside my body and head. I made some toast and jam. It filled my stomach but made no impression on my head. But at least I’d added another couple of memories. They were rotten ones but I could cope better knowing than not knowing. Assuming they were real of course.
I put on the wireless. I like the Home Service in the afternoon. I was in time for Music While You Work. Jimmy Dorsey’s big band filled the room, then Dinah Shore sang Cole Porter. Music lifts me. I’m a great reader but I don’t understand classical music. I reckon I could if someone explained it to me; it can’t be that far from something like Moonlight Serenade. I mean they’re all tunes, aren’t they, though they seem to use more violins than Dorsey.
I stepped out the building humming Star Dust, filled with new determination. I had one lead. Kate mentioned a club that Caldwell belonged to over in Jermyn Street. Truth is I’d thought of that, too. But there were simply so many in London that I hadn’t had the heart to trek round them all. To be even more truthful, I don’t like them. I don’t feel comfortable in their plush entrance halls, trying to get past the flunky. I’d been made an officer but I was a long way from feeling like a gentleman.
I hopped on a bus up to the Elephant and then caught another over the new bridge at Waterloo and down the Strand. I watched the young ticket collector swinging from the pole and jumping up and down the stairs. He seemed happy in his work, chatting to the old girls who cheeked him back. Chatting up the young birds who flushed and stammered. Maybe I should try a different profession?
I got off at Trafalgar Square and walked through Admiralty Arch and down the Mall. The Palace was flying the Union flag and looked as if it would be there till Doomsday. God knows how they got away with only one bomb. Unkind folk say it’s because they’re all Germans. You have to admit it’s suspicious. It’s an easy bombing run: follow the Thames upriver until the Houses of Parliament, a smart right, skim over the lake in St James’s Park, and bingo.
The Parthenon looked like every other club in the West End: ponderous, heavy columns and high windows. The doorway was reached up a short flight of steps.
Some lights were on inside and sure enough, there was a flunky waiting to pounce. This time I had my story ready.
“Good afternoon, sir. Can I help?”
He was way too old for the last war but looked like he’d done his part in the Great one. There’s something about an NCO that you can tell a mile off, especially if you’ve been one. Maybe it’s the suspicious eyes and the slight rocking motion on the balls of the feet.
“I hope so. My name’s McRae, Captain Daniel McRae.” His head went a bit higher and I swore his arm twitched in the reflex of a salute. “I’m an old friend of Major Anthony Caldwell. He may sign himself Major Philip Caldwell. Is he in?”
I could see the flunky’s eyes narrow a fraction. But he was good, very good.
“Caldwell, you say, sir? Major Caldwell? I’ll just check our members list. We had so many new members, many of them temporary during the war.” He walked behind his desk and picked up a big book which he carefully shielded from me. He was lying of course. These chaps know all their members by sight, by name and by inside leg measurement. He continued with the pantomime. I continued to smile.
At last he looked up. He adopted a carefully placed frown of concentration suggesting he had some delicate information to impart and wasn’t sure how to do it.
“It would seem, sir, that we did have a Major Caldwell with us. But there is an entry here saying that we can’t divulge details.”
He savoured divulge, as though he’d only just learned it. “Not even to an old friend? We served together. SOE.”
It cut no ice. A sympathetic smile grew on his face. “I understand, sir. But I think it’s possibly because you were both with SOE that we have this instruction. If you see?”
I smiled my “I-quite-understand-but-you-don’t” smile. “Can you even tell me if he’s alive or dead? I know this sounds silly. But it’s been a while.”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “The instructions are clear. We can’t say anything at all about the Major.” He closed the book and the conversation.
“Can I leave a message?”
“By all means, sir. But I can’t say if it will be answered or not. If you see?”
“May I borrow some paper and a pen, please?”
I kept it short, just asking Caldwell or his relative or friend to get in touch with me. I left my telephone number. I walked out of the club fully expecting never to hear from anyone, and wondering what other leads I could trace that would earn me Kate Graveney’s up-front fee.
Three months ago I’d tried his old regiment – the Royal Signals – to see if they had an address. It was my first stop after being stonewalled by the document guardians at the SOE. I spent a whole day on the phone being sent from office to office, clerk to clerk. I finally found a corporal in the Signals records unit who was very helpful but ultimately useless.
He explained that one or two officers had been commissioned into this regiment simply as a holding arrangement while they went off and did some skulduggery in occupied Europe or at Bletchley Park. These officers never saw the inside of the mess at their nominal regiment, but it gave them a unit against which they could be paid and draw a uniform. There had been a Major Philip Anthony Caldwell associated with the Signals but he’d been demobbed. They had no forwarding address; why didn’t I try SOE?
I decided to check the hospital, St Thomas’s, just across Lambeth Bridge from Pimlico. That’s where Kate said she’d been taken. I explained my situation at the desk – a version of it anyway; the old pal act. The receptionist was a bit reluctant at first but when I took off my hat and she saw my scars in all their glory, she became more sympathetic. Maybe I should only make passes at nurses?
The girl got up and sifted through the drawers of a filing cabinet. “There’s no record of a Major Caldwell or even a Mister Caldwell, around that date, sir. But there’s lots of hospitals around this area. They could have taken him anywhere.”
“Do you have a record for Miss Kate Graveney, then?”
She searched again and paused at one file. She turned and looked at me queerly.
