Last Rights Page 3

  I lay listening to and watching that hell for I don’t know how long. But some time I must have gone to sleep because the next thing I really remember is the daylight shining on to all the glass shards that were covering my body. As I sat up, I heard someone laugh and I looked down into the street where I could see Alfie Rosen, Doris’s husband. With his cap stuck casual like on the back of his head and his ever-present fag on the go, the only way you’d ever think he was a bus conductor and not a wide-boy was because of the ticket machine hung round his neck.

  ‘She down your Anderson, Mr H?’ he said, anxious through his laughter about his big, buxom Doris.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Stay there, Alfie, I’ll come and let you in.’

  As I walked back down through the flat and into the shop, I wondered as I always did at how we’d survived another night. Mum and Nan, I knew, would put it all down to the grace of God and the Blessed Virgin. Like Aggie, I just felt we’d been lucky, got away with it again.

  I unlocked the front door and looked into Alfie’s smiling, grimy face. Like his father, Herschel, Alfie Rosen is one of those red-haired Jews with very pale, almost colourless, skin. But then as I moved aside to let him in, another person turned up – big Fred Bryant, constable at the local nick. ‘Hello, Mr Hancock,’ he said, as he respectfully removed his helmet. ‘Can I come in for a mo?’

  I said yes, let him in and my life changed.

  The police brought the body round about an hour later in a mortuary van. Fred said the morgue couldn’t take any more – not that the morgue was the morgue any more. That couldn’t cope so other places had had to be pressed into service for the reception of the dead. Poplar swimming-baths was now used as the morgue, a nice big area with tiles you could wash down easily.

  But, that day, it was full too.

  ‘I don’t know who he is,’ Fred said, as two of his blokes and the mortuary-van man placed the body in one of my coffins, ‘but he’s all in one piece and Dr Cockburn’s done him a certificate, so I thought that if he could rest here for a bit someone might come along and claim him.’

  ‘I can’t keep him long, Fred,’ I said. ‘At least, not open. I can’t risk maggots everywhere.’

  Maggots breed quickly in a corpse that isn’t preserved in any way. Unpreserved and open in the coffin this happens even more rapidly so you have to be careful to make sure you close up as soon as you can. Maggots underneath the lino is not a pleasant experience, especially if people, like my family and me, have to live in the property.

  ‘Nah.’ Fred’s heavily jowled face broke into a smile. ‘If no one claims him you can make arrangements in a bit. But he’s quite a good-looking fella – hard, you know – and I can’t believe no one’ll miss him. Take a gander.’

  Fred pulled away the cloth they’d used to cover his face and there he was, no more at rest in death than he had been when I’d seen him that night after the bare-knuckle fight. His eyes still stared at me with the same hatred I’d seen then. Like with the poor buggers who’d tried to desert from the trenches, nobody had taken the care to close the eyes after death. But that’s what you get if you’re nameless, like this bloke, and shamed like the poor bastards my comrades and I were terrified into executing. Made me jump at first, and the rest if Fred Bryant was any judge.

  ‘Christ, Mr H, you ain’t ’arf gone pale,’ he said. ‘Look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘You could say that,’ I said, as I closed the man’s eyes and covered his angry features once again. Then I told Fred about my strange encounter with this man and his apparently barmy belief that he’d been stabbed.

  ‘He ain’t been stabbed,’ Fred said dismissively. ‘Got a bit of blood on him, but who ain’t these days?’ He laughed. ‘No, it’s blast what killed him, Mr H. Look at the shock on his face. I’ve seen it before. Blast takes all the wind out of their bodies, stops their hearts dead, it does. Heart failure’s what the doc’s put on his certificate so there’s no arguing with that. Bloody blast!’

  Fred was probably right. I’d seen a few who’d died from blast myself and they were generally as he’d described. Of course there were stories about blast that had to be ridiculous – like the one about the bloke whose clothes had been ripped off his body, or the other bloke who, apparently, had been blown up his own chimney. But deaths like this were not and still aren’t uncommon so I left the body out in the back room and took Fred through into the shop. By this time, Doris had been reunited with her Alfie so I had to clear my throat as I went into the office – they had been really worried about each other and were enjoying a good kiss.

  ‘Mind getting me and Fred a cuppa, Doris?’ I said.

  ‘Can I make my Alfie one too?’ she said.

  ‘Course you can.’

  When she’d gone, that left the three of us. Fred offered round the fags, a bit reluctantly to Alfie, I noticed. Alfie was born and bred, like Doris, in Spitalfields, but his parents had come from Germany originally. Poor Jews they were, who came to England to get a better life. But Alfie’s old dad was put in an internment camp as soon as war broke out. Six months and him nearly eighty and a Jew. It’s well known Hitler doesn’t like Jews, so why Herschel Rosen was interned is beyond me. But Fred, maybe because he is a policeman and is paid, especially in these times, to be suspicious wasn’t happy in ‘German’ Alfie’s company.

  ‘I’ll give him a bit of a clean-up in a while,’ I said, more than anything else to break the silence.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The deceased,’ I said, tipping my head back in the direction we’d just come from.

  ‘Oh.’

  He’d lost interest, too busy looking at Alfie sucking at a Woodbine. When Doris came back with the tea, the mood got a bit better. Tea can always do that, tea and the fact that Fred has always liked Doris. Only a couple of days before he’d said to our Nan, ‘I like that Doris Mankiewicz, as was, she’s a good, straight girl.’ If he’d added ‘for a Jew’, I wouldn’t have been surprised, but Nan never reported any more than what was said. Both Doris and Alfie are in their thirties. He’s on the buses on account of his age and not being fit enough for the forces. There’s some sort of heart problem. Not that it was, according to Doris, that much of a problem until his dad was sent away.

  ‘We’ve got Florrie Starr at ten, Mr H,’ Doris said, as she sat down and rolled herself a fag. ‘Do you want my Alfie to stick around?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Florrie Starr had lived with her daughter in a flat in Plaistow, Inniskilling Road. A wife and mother who took in a bit of washing, Florrie had been perfectly ordinary in every way – except her size. She was what Dad would have called a ‘whopper’. Florrie had to have been over twenty stone. And with only Arthur and Walter, with me conducting, we needed all the help we could get.

  Fred left soon after that. I had to organise a suit for Alfie and get the other two lads in order and then we were off. I didn’t have time to think much about the man out the back until well after Florrie’d been interred. In fact, I waited until I was on my own that night before I unwrapped him and this time had a good proper look. This man had, after all, if briefly, entered one of my waking nightmares. And although I don’t believe in ghosts, shades or any rubbish like that, I felt I owed this fellow madman a bit more than just closing his eyes.

  Chapter Three

  There was more blood, just below his chest, than I’d remembered. He had put his hand there, it was true, but I couldn’t see any cuts even when I washed him. All there was was a small red hole, like a pimple, just under his breastbone. I looked at it closely but it meant nothing to me so I carried on washing, my ears straining for the sirens like they always do now.

  After a while, when nothing happened, Aggie came down with a cup of tea. If it’d been Nan, I would’ve covered the body, but there was no need around my younger sister. Not squeamish in any way, Aggie. Strange that Nan is, given what she’s been brought up around, but there it is and that’s that.

  ‘He’s a dark,
vicious-lookin’ thing,’ she said, as she passed the cup and saucer to me.

  ‘I think he might’ve been a fighter,’ I said, as I rinsed the carbolic off my hands, then dried them on a cloth.

  Aggie got in closer to have a better look. Fascinated, she always was, even as a kid. I once heard Dad say that if she hadn’t been a girl he’d have passed the business over to Aggie instead of me. I wasn’t meant to hear that, of course, but I don’t feel anything about it because I can see what he meant. Not that it’s death itself that interests Aggie. No, it’s the human body. She always liked nature at school and I think sometimes that maybe if things had been different she might have found herself a position in that line. But the same as everyone now, she works for the war effort. In her case in a factory, filling tins with golden syrup and suchlike and laughing with other girls whose very breath would turn the air as blue as their works’ overalls.

  ‘Doris said that Fred Bryant brought him in,’ Aggie said, wrinkling her nose in disgust at mention of the policeman’s name. Nobody likes Fred that much. He’s an idiot a lot of the time, with his opinions about everyone and the way he gossips. But, like coppers the world over, he has to be tolerated.

  ‘Yes. Fred reckons the blast killed him,’ I said, and then I recounted my own story about the deceased and his possible route into my parlour. I suppose I must have needed to tell someone I felt might have some sympathy with me and what I’d done.

  ‘I mean, he can’t really have been stabbed,’ I said, ‘but it bothered me so I’ve been looking at him while I’ve been washing and…’

  ‘What about this?’ Aggie said, pointing to the red pimple under his breastbone.

  ‘I don’t know. Not a stab wound, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Could be.’

  I looked across at her, frowning. ‘Ag, it’s a spot or something.’

  Aggie leaned back on the bench behind her and lit a cigarette. In the yellow light from the one bare gas mantle she looked older and paler than when her makeup was just freshly done. But two kids and a husband who chose to hop off with his best mate’s missus will do that for you.

  ‘Not if whoever stabbed him used a pin or something like that,’ she said.

  ‘A pin?’

  ‘A long one, like a hatpin,’ Aggie said. ‘One of them big ones like Mum has on her mourning hat. Stick one of them into a bloke, you’d kill him.’

  ‘No.’

  She got up and came back over to the body. ‘Look, it’s around where his heart is, Frank,’ she said. ‘Stick something in the heart and you’ve had it. Ask Dr O’Grady if you don’t believe me.’

  ‘I don’t not believe you,’ I said. ‘It’s just that it’s such a strange idea. I mean, who would do something like that?’

  She shrugged. ‘A woman. You said he said “she” stabbed him, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. But with a hatpin?’

  ‘Why not? If he was attacking her, she’d use whatever come to hand, wouldn’t she? Maybe he’d just been down one of them certain houses in Rathbone Street and forgot to pay his dues.’

  ‘In a raid?’

  Aggie shrugged again. ‘Hitler don’t stop what goes on down there,’ she said, and her voice broke into a coarse laugh. ‘And them as don’t pay get what’s coming to ’em. Maybe one of the girls spiked him.’

  ‘With a hatpin?’

  ‘I’ve heard it said, yes.’ Aggie puffed heavily on her cigarette and looked me hard in the eyes. ‘I’ve never heard of no one killed. But some blokes, some of the rougher ’erberts at work, well, they say they’ve been spiked in the leg. Not all of them girls down there have blokes looking out for them. I’d’ve thought you’d’ve known that, Frank.’

  And then, before I could even draw breath to protest, she left. Not that I would have protested. For our own various reasons, both Aggie and I know Rathbone Street – or, rather, certain houses and ‘ladies’ in it. Some of the blokes at Tate & Lyle are regulars down there. Getting what they need, then going back to the factory and talking about it in loud voices in front of the women. Working men, relieving their frustrations with street women, well, it’s just what they do, isn’t it? Stops the wives complaining about getting in the family way all the time if nothing else. But what if a man hasn’t got a wife? And what if that man’s skin is the colour of tea and his job is about burying the dead?

  I only go down there to see Hannah. I don’t go often and we talk as much as anything. She’s bright, Hannah. Things just turned out bad for her, a bit like they did for Aggie. Difference being, of course, that Hannah doesn’t have family. Now she has to put up with all sorts, including me, and the way her situation sometimes makes me go on. ‘There’s no point talking,’ she always says. ‘I have to see men as well as you and you have to pretend you don’t come here.’ Which I do, although Aggie knows. I don’t know how because we’ve never spoken about it, but she knows.

  I covered the body over then and turned out the light. Maybe I would ask Dr O’Grady just to take a look at that thing below his breastbone, just to see whether what Aggie had said was possible. Or maybe I’d go and see Hannah, ask her whether what Aggie had said could be true. I’d have to be careful, of course, down there. Canning Town, where Rathbone Street is, can be a rough place even in the daytime. Not that I stick out. Lascars, black men and all sorts get down there. Men off the ships, torpedo-happy and far from home. Although not all of them are simply passing through. Down Victoria Dock Road there’s what I suppose you might call a community of Lascars. That poor, squalid little area is only a minute or two from Rathbone Street. Me, I’m just another dark bloke, invisible really, visiting a woman who sees a lot of blokes like me. Not that all of the women will happily entertain my colour even if, as Hannah’s told me, I’m taken for a Jew more often than not.

  When I went to bed that night I thought about how I might get out to see Hannah. It’s not often possible and I only ever do it when I can get an hour away from the shop with no questions asked.

  Although the sirens did go off eventually that night, the raid, when it came, didn’t affect us that much and so, although I did go outside, I got off to sleep. Out in the yard, leaning against the stable, I thought about Hannah and what she might be able to tell me with regard to my corpse. Better, really, would be to go round the corner to Dr O’Grady and get him to come and have a look. But as well as wanting to know about my unknown man I was also keen, I knew, to see Hannah. Same age as me, lonely and hurting inside, Hannah is the nearest thing to a wife I’m ever going to have. At that moment, just before I dropped off among the smell of horse dung, I tried to imagine myself curled up in her arms, my brown skin next to the hair she dyes yellow to attract other blokes like me to her door. Blokes that might have included my strange, dark, raving man. After all, hadn’t he called the ‘she’ who had supposedly stabbed him a whore? And if, as Aggie said, spiking was a recognised practice among the girls who didn’t have pimps, like Hannah . . . I suppose I should have been horrified by this thought, that someone I knew might have killed another human being. But at that moment, I was just jealous – of him and what he might have enjoyed of Hannah. Made me ashamed when I thought about it later.

  Fred Bryant arrived early the next morning. Aggie, who can’t stand the way he moons over Doris and hates the way he is with Alfie Rosen, as well as having no time for his gossip, came into the kitchen and said, ‘That copper of yours is downstairs, Frank. Got two women with him.’

  I went down to the shop where I saw Fred with a woman of about thirty and another one of probably sixty-something. The younger one, who was naturally blonde, was quite pretty in a tired sort of a way. She was wearing a worn-looking short jacket and skirt, and had the biggest dark eyes I’ve ever seen in a fair person. The woman with her wore on her toothless mug an expression of bitterness bordering on hate. As soon as I saw her, I knew she and I were destined to fall out.

  ‘This is Mrs Dooley,’ Fred said, as he tipped his head in the direction of the younger woman. ‘Com
e to have a look at the bloke I brought in yesterday.’ He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘Thinks it could possibly be her husband.’

  ‘And my son,’ the older woman put in. With her arms crossed over her large bosom and her thin mouth turned down into a scowl, the older Mrs Dooley wasn’t going to be ignored by anyone.

  ‘Right.’

  I took Fred and the two women out the back and pulled away the sheet. With his eyes closed now and because I’d washed him the previous night he didn’t look or smell that bad. I glanced down like everyone else. It was quite by chance that I looked up suddenly and caught the younger Mrs Dooley’s eye. Blank, she was – or seemed to be – no emotion, nothing. If it hadn’t been for the slight trembling of the old woman’s chin, I would have thought my bloke was unknown to both of them. But the old girl was obviously holding back something, even if it wasn’t to be tears. Grief is a funny, unpredictable thing.

  Then the younger woman, her voice cracking with suppressed emotion, spoke: ‘Yes, it’s him. That’s Kevin.’

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The old woman, her mouth twitching with the effort of concealing her feelings, shot the younger Mrs Dooley a vicious glance.

  ‘Thank you for looking after him, Mr Hancock,’ the younger woman said, with a soft smile. ‘Me and the kids,’ she looked across at the old woman, still with that smile on her face, ‘and Vi, his mum, are very grateful to you.’