I said, ‘I don’t.’
‘Then it don’t matter.’
‘Talking to Maggs,’ James told me, as if she wasn’t there, ‘is like wrestling with the sea: every time you think you’ve tied down what she means, you find it’s slipped out of your grasp again.’
‘I see,’ I said.
‘You don’t,’ he insisted. ‘That’s exactly my point.’
‘Well; that’s all right then.’ That was Mrs Maggs. It was like trying to learn a different language using familiar words in unfamiliar places.
The small house was a severe cottage made of large, polished, grey stone blocks in a wide avenue of otherwise enormous houses. It had two rooms downstairs, bisected by a passage front to back, and a narrow staircase leading to three bedrooms. The room I was given was small, and filled by a three-quarter-size four-poster with red velvet moth-eaten draperies. I looked in the larger room that Les and Jimmy were to share. It was the same, but the bed was bigger, and it smelled of stale perfume and disinfectant. The third bedroom was Mrs Maggs’s, and I didn’t have the nerve to look in that, but I guessed it was the same, because worn red velvet seemed to be the house’s theme. Later, when James told me that he and Les had to go out that evening and didn’t particularly want me with them, I mentioned the red velvet, and said, ‘It sort of reminds me of a . . .’
‘Brothel. Well done, Charlie. Mrs Bassett had a bright baby, didn’t she?’
‘I’m sorry, Major, it’s not an area I’m particularly familiar with.’
‘Well, you bloody should be. The only alternative’s getting married, and you’ll find that too expensive, although old Les has strong views on that.’
‘If that’s where you’re going tonight, perhaps I should come with you then: in the interests of acquiring a well-rounded education.’
‘Nice try, Charlie.’ He grinned. ‘But no go. We’re looking up old pals. They wouldn’t be old pals any longer if we took new pals along with us. No offence intended.’
‘None taken,’ I told him. ‘Not much, anyway.’
‘The witch’ll feed you, and anyway I need someone to look after Kate. We won’t be moving her tonight, and if I leave her here alone Maggs would probably have a couple of friends round and have the wheels off her. Think of yourself as on guard duty.’
We were standing at the bottom of the stairs in the geographical centre of the house. Before I could say ‘OK’, Mrs Maggs’s voice needled out of the kitchen, ‘The witch heard all of that, so you can make your own bleedin’ breakfast in the morning.’
If James was embarrassed it didn’t show.
Supper was a surprise, as it turned out; dark brown, spicy onion soup, and a potato dish called stovies, which she said she’d learned from a passing Scots soldier. She didn’t say passing Scots soldier, she said, ‘Fucking great Highlander.’ I guess it meant the same thing. This stovies thing didn’t look too appetizing when it hit the table in a steaming serving dish; grey food never does. It was a small mountain of mashed potato, flecked through with small pieces of potato skin and small red lumps. The red lumps were smashed-up corned beef. She slapped it on my plate with a dollop of soured cream on top. I thought that it looked like something served up in the poor house a century ago, but was shamed into a first forkful. After that it was roses all the way. Bloody brilliant; a load of pepper, which was supposed to be as scarce as hens’ teeth, just topped off the flavour. We finished it between us, in the narrow kitchen that had once been a Lancaster, and washed it down with the last of Les’s cider, which I swiped out of Kate’s boot. It was strange, sitting comfortably and eating a meal inside the sort of aircraft I’d been over Germany in so many times. Swords and bloody ploughshares. I’ve told you before: what goes around, comes around. Mrs Maggs didn’t speak with her mouth full, so it was a peaceful kind of meal. Even though we were paying I felt obliged to offer up something. I offered to do the washing up. The old lady threw up her hands, and laughed. Then she lowered the laugh to something respectable. But it was still a laugh. She shook her head.
‘Why not?’
‘One of the girls will do it in the morning.’
‘Why not me?’
There was a pause for a three-beat before she told me, regretfully, ‘You wouldn’t do it to our satisfaction,’ and that was that.
She had neither tea nor coffee, she told me, but made us two stone mugs of a herbal infusion from something she grew in the gun turret. She said that it could be a tender plant, and that during the frosts she sometimes left a shrouded oil lamp in there to take the edge off the cold. We took it to the smaller of the two front rooms, which had a small iron stove. The combination of a glass of cider and this strange spicy tea relaxed me. I was comfortable: the conversation flowed naturally. It was like being with an old friend, or a favourite aunt.
‘What really happened to Mr Maggs? The Major was talking so much tosh earlier, wasn’t he? He and Les talk in some sort of code around me sometimes. It’s like parents talking in front of a child.’
Mrs Maggs’s accent had changed. Either that, or I had become attuned to it. She was still London English, but most of the East End had gone. She said, ‘Mr Bonnet, pronounced Bonnay. I shot the swine, took up with a Jerry an’ opened a brothel.’
‘So how did you meet the Major?’
‘A few days after the Liberation. My Jerry – he was a Major by then, too – was hiding here, looking for someone to surrender to. The Resistance wanted to hang him, but Major England knew he was here an’ came an’ collected
