To complete the picture, Albert Potter came lumbering along the corridor from his suite. For some reason he still had the warning rattle he'd used last night in his hand and for one bad moment I thought he was gonna blast our ears with it again. Instead he shouted: ' What the bleedin 'ell's goin on? Can't a fellah get a decent kip around 'ere?' Mercifully, he tucked the rattle back into one of the large pockets in his overalls.
Cissie, a leg still across my chest, finally got both hands around my wrist and pulled the gun away from its mark.
'Please, Hoke, give it up,' she pleaded and there was a sob at the end of her words.
I glanced at her, saw the tears beginning to roll, and I guess it was that that took the wind out of me. I was still full of rage, but some of its energy had left me. I let my head slump back onto the carpet, and as I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, I relaxed my grip on the gun, let my arm go limp. Still Cissie clung to my wrist, not trusting me.
'Okay. I'm done,' I assured her. 'Just get him outta my sight for a while.' They knew I meant Stern and not the dog who, now that the commotion was over, was trying to lick my face.
I heard someone helping the German to his feet, and then he was standing over me, looking down. There was no wariness in his eyes, no fear, only a simmering anger.
'You are a fool,' he hissed. 'There was no need for this. I am not your enemy.'
I ignored him, then suddenly remembered the gun he'd been aiming at Cagney. I sat up, fast, Cissie's grip instantly tightening on my wrist. With relief I saw that Potter had picked up the German's weapon.
'What's this then?' the warden mused, as if he'd never seen a gun before.
'It's a US military issue Colt 380,' I informed him, and he nodded his head like he knew all along. 'Don't let Stern have it,' I warned.
'Do you really think I would shoot you?' Stern sounded almost regretful. 'After all that has happened.. .'
He waved his hands around as if indicating the world outside. 'I found this weapon in my room and kept it for my own protection. I believe I was wise to do so. But do you honestly believe I have the desire to kill again? If you do, then you really are insane, Hoke. The Blood Death has made you so.'
With that he walked away from us, one hand held to his injured forehead. He disappeared inside his room and we heard the door close quietly behind him.
Supper that evening was a miserable affair. No one felt much like talking and Stern didn't even join us.
Let him sulk, I thought, it didn't bother me none. Potter did his best to get things going by reminiscing, relating stories of the Blitz, some of them funny, some of them not so. He told us how one night when he was on his rounds, he'd found Ed Murrow, the famous American war correspondent, lying in the gutter outside the Savoy, not rolling drunk, as Potter had first assumed, but picking up the sounds of wailing sirens and enemy bombs hitting their targets with his microphone, these authentic noises of war to be broadcast across the Atlantic. He told us about the authorities' grand idea of turning gas masks into Mickey Mouse faces so the kids wouldn't be afraid to wear them; how once he'd chased a couple of looters through Covent Garden only to see them both blown to pieces before his eyes by a land mine, one of the looter's legs landing on his shoulder as he'd stood there surprised; how on a cold, frosty dawn he'd come upon an elderly, white-haired lady sitting up in bed, totally bewildered as to why she was in the open, one floor up, two walls of her house completely demolished. He told us about the fireman he'd witnessed breaking down a warehouse door across the street, the poor man sucked inside by the firestorm when the door collapsed, to be burned to nothing, not even his bones left in
Potter rambled on, amused and saddened in turn by his own stories, while across the room Muriel gave me an occasional long meaningful look, which I ignored, and Cissie, who'd taken over the cooking, shot me an angry glance from time to time, which I also ignored. We ate mostly in silence, Potter finally giving up the chatter, and both girls left the suite as soon as pans and plates were washed. Muriel's 'good night'
was kind of stiff, and Cissie didn't bother. So the warden and me, we cracked open another Jack Daniel's and finished it between us.
He was a mite unsteady when he left me that night, and he said a funny thing. He swayed in the doorway and laid a stubby finger against that beetroot nose of his, giving me a wink at the same time.
'I know what yer business is, son. And it's okay by me. Bloke's got to do what he thinks is best, even if it is 'opeless.
I won't tell another bleedin soul, seein as 'ow yer keepin it secret yerself.'
He shook his head, his eyes bleary with the booze.
'But it can't be done, boy. It can't bloody well be done. There's too...'
He just shook his head again and walked away.
Too bloody many...' I heard him say as he tottered down the corridor.
12
I'D CLEARED THE STREET. This was the last carcass. Any others were out of sight, inside the buildings. Like they say -
I lifted the bag of bones onto the back of the truck, oblivious to its shrivelled eyes, like black raisins above its yawning, meatless mouth, and it slithered down at me from the pile, a reluctant evacuee. Its bony fingers snagged against my sweatshirt as I pushed it back and I was too tired and too seasoned to feel any revulsion. When the desiccated corpse was settled, I picked up my jacket lying on the kerbside and the rifle leaning against the truck's rear wheel, then climbed into the cab.
Once this had been an ordinary city street, its houses untouched by Hitler's worst, the corner pub still open for business; but weeds now grew between the cracks in the pavements and vehicles rusted away in the road. But it was the silence that got to me. After three long and lonely years, I still hadn't become used to that eerie hush, not in undamaged streets like this where everything seemed so normal. It was as if the place was ... well, haunted. I thought of Muriel's ghosts back at the Savoy and got angry with myself.
Slamming the truck's door after me, I tossed my jacket onto the passenger seat and settled the rifle in the footwell on that side, its muzzle leaning against the open window opposite, pointed away from me but within easy reach. The girl had been wrong, she was haunted by memories, not by spectres. Even I'd imagined the sound of voices, laughter -music, too - drifting up to me as I'd lain awake nights in that grand rotting mausoleum. Couple of times I'd even gone to the door and listened, opening it when I was sure there really was something going on downstairs, the noises always vanishing the moment I stepped out into the corridor. Just night-notions, that's all they were. Dreams when I hadn't even realized I'd been asleep. Muriel would soon get to realize that imagination had a way of playing tricks on you when you were in a low frame of mind. They weren't just dreams either, they were
I turned on the engine, took one last look at the deserted street out the side window, and drove off.
Although weary from my labours and a little hungover from the night before, I kept alert, constantly on the lookout for the unexpected. One time about a year and some months ago, a crazy had jumped out at the truck I was using, an Austin 5-ton, as I recall, its flap sides and back easy for loading. He was waving a butcher's meat axe over his head and hollering gibberish at me. Maybe I should have stopped, but it was the middle of winter and this guy was stark naked. And oh yeah, around his neck under a long greasy beard he wore a ragged necklace of
