‘That’s where you’re from – Wisconsin?’
I nodded in the dark, and added a ‘yes’ for Muriel’s benefit.
‘Peg was a maid in one of your small, country hotels Dad was staying in, and when I was growed up enough to be interested he told me it was her “sparklin eyes” he first fell in love with, the rest of her ‘bout two days later.’
‘And your mother – did she fall for him so quickly?’
‘Guess she must have, because when he left eight days later she went with him. Just took off, the pair of ‘em, bill paid, notice given, but no explanation to anyone. Back to Winona, Wisconsin, USA. They got hitched right away and a year later I arrived.’
‘Wasn’t she afraid? A new country thousands of miles away from her own family?’
‘Ma had none to speak of. Her old man had been an Irish immigrant, who hadn’t treated Grandma too well. Peggy was his only daughter. When his wife died, he returned to Ireland where he probably killed himself with booze, according to Ma. Oh, he’d found his kid a job in a wash-house before he’d left, so I guess he figured he’d done his duty. And that was fine by Ma – at fourteen years of age she figured she was better off without him. When she married Dad, she didn’t know if her old man was dead or alive, and she told me years later she hadn’t cared.’
Muriel’s fingers moved to my arm and she stroked it, elbow to wrist.
‘She was never bitter about it though. Hell no, she was too thankful for her new life with Joseph, my dad. But y’know, although she never had a family to miss, she had something else to hanker after. Ma never got tired of telling me about her home country and I never got tired of listening.’
Muriel couldn’t see me, but I was smiling at the memory. It felt good to talk about my folks after all this time and, for a while at least, it was holding down thoughts of Sally.
‘She regretted leaving England?’
‘No, I didn’t say that. She’d found her happiness in Wisconsin, but that didn’t mean she didn’t get homesick now and again. She read me books by English authors all the time, and when I was old enough, got me to read ‘em myself. Got me interested in the country’s history, too. Maybe the only regret she had was that I wasn’t getting an English education and I wasn’t being brought up the British way. She took a lot of pride in the traditions and manners of this country of yours, even though she was only from working stock, and sometimes I wondered if those funny wire-framed spectacles she wore later on in life weren’t just a little rosetinted. Her dream was to bring me over here for a short while, show me all those things she’d told me about, but the cancer put a hold on that.’
My smile was gone and I took time to inhale smoke. Muriel’s hand was still on my arm.
‘She passed away in ‘38, and Dad followed her eight months later. His ticker, the doc said, disease had worn it out. I always believed it was heartbreak that did it, though; or at least, hurried it along. I think he just didn’t want to go on without his Peg any more.’
My smile had come back. It gave me some comfort, the thought of Dad going after his Peg, darned if he was gonna let her explore the great unknown on her own. ‘Your ma’s got no sense of direction,’ he’d always joked with me. ‘Lose herself in the parlour if she didn’t have me around to call her.’ Well, wherever she’d gone, I hoped he’d caught up with her. And I was kind of glad they’d both missed the horror that was to come.
‘You were left alone?’ Muriel’s hand tightened around my arm.
‘Alone ain’t so bad,’ I lied. Alone was hell on wheels. Alone was a slow trip to insanity. Alone was the worst thing any man, woman or child could live with. My smile was gone again, wilted away in the shadows.
‘By that time I was living away from home anyway,’ I went on before self-pity set me blubbing again. ‘I was in Madison, attending the University of Wisconsin, studying engineering. Dad’s company was in bad shape by the time he died, and his brother, a wiseacre even Dad didn’t like, offered to take it off my hands, lock, stock and barrel, for no money at all. Well, that suited me just fine – what did I want with a pile of debts and a head full of problems when I was barely scraping eighteen? My uncle was welcome to ‘em. Besides, I was supporting myself well enough by bike racing and some barnstorming at weekends.’
‘What’s barnstorming? I’ve never heard of that one before.’
‘Air acrobatics, I guess you’d call it.’
‘You were flying at eighteen?’
‘Sure. When I was ten years old, Dad took me over to a barnstorming show in a field just outside town. Gave me a dollar to spend while he looked over a couple of crates he had in mind for crop-dusting, something that was becoming pretty popular about that time. I wandered off towards an old airplane I’d spied soon as we drove in, a beat-up Fairchild, as I recall, and when I handed its pilot the dollar and asked for a ride, well, he sized me up, bit the dollar, and lifted me aboard. ‘Course, I told him Dad said it was okay, and that was good enough for this flyer, whether he believed me or not. And once I was up there in the clear blue air, high over the whole goddamn world, everything below shrunk into insignificance, well, I never wanted to come down again. I knew flying was the thing I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
‘But Ma-’specially Ma – and Dad didn’t agree with my ambition, though when I kept ducking school so’s I could wander around our local airfield we came to an arrangement. They’d pay for me to take flying lessons if I promised to stay in school and study hard. Anyway, I think Dad had an idea floating around in the back of his mind even then, because by the time I was sixteen I was crop-dusting for his farmer friends and acquaintances in our own second-hand plane.’
I leaned forward in the bed, wrists resting over my raised knees, cigarette butt warm between my fingers. I kept perfectly still, ears keen, eyes straining at the reflected moonlight on the opposite wall.
‘What’s wrong?’ Muriel sat up next to me, the sheet falling around her waist.
I shushed her, listening still. I felt her body go tense beside me.
‘Thought I heard something,’ I said eventually. ‘Must’ve been wrong.’
Relaxing against the headboard again, I reached for the cigarette pack on the bedside cabinet. This time I remembered to offer one to Muriel, but she shook her head, a movement I barely caught in the darkness. Lighting one for myself, I stubbed out the old cigarette in the full ashtray by the bed, and dropped the pack into my lap. Smoke drifted across the room, thin spectres that caught the light by the windows. Muriel rested her head on my shoulder, her hair tickling my flesh.
‘Tell me more,’ she urged, as if my story reminded her of a different reality, a better time than the present
‘There’s not much more to it.’ A second lie, but there was only so much I was willing to tell. ‘When war broke out in Europe, I knew immediately what I wanted to do. All those tales Ma told me, about her life in England, the places she’d worked and lived in, about the kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, all those books she’d read to me and the ones I’d read myself when I was older – hell, I even knew the rules of cricket Dad had always kidded me I was more British than American, and I kind of liked that, made me feel different, something special. I guess that was because I thought Ma was so special. Huh, sometimes when I was little I even copied her accent.’ I gave a shake of my head. ‘Y’know, she never did lose that accent in all those years she was married to Dad.’
I exhaled smoke, enjoying its taste, its smell. It’d been a long time since I’d felt so relaxed and I figured it was due to the talking as much as the lovemaking. The booze at dinner had loosened me too and I was almost – only almost – beginning to feel glad of the company. I should have known it was dangerous to let others into my life once more.
‘You’ve stopped talking again.’ There was no impatience in Muriel’s voice, only amusement
‘Yeah. Just thinking.’
‘You said when war broke out you knew what you wanted to do.’
I
blew smoke away from her face. ‘I wanted to help the Brits fight their war with Germany any way I could. So I began flying aircraft, bombers mainly, up to the Canadian border. Because of the Neutrality Act, America couldn’t export planes direct to the UK, not even over to Canada, so we used to fly ‘em as close to the Canadian border as possible, then tow ‘em across the line by rope and truck. It was a crazy way of getting planes to you, but it worked. No rules broken.’
She laughed, a soft fluttery sound that did us both some good.
‘It wasn’t long before I got another bright idea. I hitched a ride on a bomber out of RCAF Training Station Trenton to the 1st American Eagle Squadron over here and they let me sign up as a pilot officer. I had the flying hours and they needed the men, it was as simple as that. So I became part of your war, long before my own country decided to get involved.’
I closed my eyes, feeling some relief. But that was it, I was done, I didn’t want to tell her any more. Anything else would dredge up memories I’d fought too long to keep down. Fortunately, Muriel didn’t press me further. She must have sensed my change in mood, realized that more questions might arouse too much pain in me, release the bitterness I was holding in check. I liked her for that. Yeah, at that moment I almost loved her for it.
Opening my eyes, I leaned over and dogged the cigarette, then turned towards her. Her hand moved across my chest, her touch as sensuous as before, though less demanding, both of us at ease with one another. She shifted her body, offering her lips to me in the dark, and I accepted, my own mouth brushing against hers, the kiss tentative at first, but soon becoming firmer as fresh desire began to climb. Our tongues probed, we tasted each other’s juices. Her hand slid down my chest, over my stomach, dipping beneath the rumpled sheet, finding my hardness and causing me to gasp as her fingers encircled and gripped me tight. I pulled her to me, one hand cradling her hip, and she turned her face towards the ceiling as my lips pressed against the softness of her neck.
Now she was gasping, and she squirmed her body so that she was beneath me, her legs parting once again as she murmured words I couldn’t hear. Her breasts rose into me as her breathing became more uneven and her grip went to my waist, her hands pulling at me, her murmuring taking on a new urgency, her passion revived, her hunger just as desperate as before. I felt the familiar rush inside me, the incredible surging of senses, blood pounding in my chest so that I could hear its sound…could hear…
She cried out as I abruptly turned away from her, wheeling round in the bed to stare at the big windows. The pounding…somewhere in the distance out there. Lighting up the night sky. And drawing closer by the second.
‘Oh my God,’ said Muriel, panic rising in her voice. ‘What is it, Hoke?’
‘Bombs,’ I told her flatly.
‘But-’
‘We’ll be okay. Don’t worry about it.’
My back was to her and she slid closer, her hands reaching for my shoulders. I winced as her fingers touched the covered graze the bullet had left along my right shoulder earlier that day.
‘Who is it, Hoke?’ she pleaded. ‘Who would be bombing London now? Is it those people who chased us?’
‘Listen,’ I said, my eyes still watching the windows.
The deep drone of engines came to us between the sounds of bombs exploding.
‘An aeroplane?’ she asked incredulously.
‘You got it.’
The windows suddenly lit up and rattled in their frames as a bomb fell somewhere across the river.
‘I don’t understand. Why would any-’
I cut her off curtly. ‘They’re German. Possibly just one man, still fighting his own personal war. He’s insane, d’you understand that?’ I didn’t know why I was angry at her; maybe it was because suddenly I had to explain things that I’d gotten used to.
She flinched as another bomb hit the other riverbank, the blast shaking the hotel’s windows, this time with more force.
‘He comes over every once in a while, usually when you think things have quietened down again and he’s given up. Given up or dead.’
‘It’s madness.’
‘Like I said.’
Another explosion, this one on our side of the Thames and fierce enough to make the whole building tremble. Muriel pulled me round so that she could squeeze between my arms, and I was about to suggest we take cover on the other side or beneath the bed when another noise came to us, a harsh, demented rattling from the corridor outside our room. She tried to burrow into me and I wasn’t sure which was scaring her most. The rattling grew louder, a terrible cacophony that resembled a stick running along iron railings, only a thousand times more piercing.
Then we heard the old warden’s voice. ‘Air raid warning, everyone under cover, please go to your nearest shelter!’
The door burst open and Potter’s bright flashlight lit us up on the bed. We shielded our eyes and the light dropped. I blinked away the dazzle and when I looked back at the doorway I saw there were two figures standing there.
Another blast outside – this one mercifully further off, the German bomber moving onwards – diverted my attention for a moment or two, and when I turned towards the doorway again, only Albert Potter was standing there, flashlight in one hand, his air raid warning rattle in the other. The second figure, Cissie, had gone.
11
I BROUGHT THE FLATBED truck round, a hard left from the Embankment into the gentle rise that ran between the park and the Savoy’s rear entrance, and was surprised to see Cissie sitting on the kerbside opposite the hotel. I grinned when I saw who was keeping her company and I wondered at it too.
They both looked up when they heard the chug of the truck’s diesel engine and the girl’s concerned frown switched to a guarded smile of welcome when she realized I was the driver. Cagney quickly rose from his haunches and gave a pleased yap, then chased after me when I drove on by. I headed towards the end of the narrow street where there was room to turn the long vehicle round so it faced the right direction, easy to get away in a hurry should the need arise. Another road ran beneath the buildings at the end of the street, but it was blocked by other vehicles, its first few clear yards only good for manoeuvring. A few hundred yards away one of the buildings of London’s law courts was still smouldering from last night’s bomb damage, but I couldn’t see any other wreckage. The crazy German bomber pilot was unpredictable, but I hoped he’d had his fill of laying waste for a while: sometimes he came over several nights in a row, sometimes he wouldn’t appear for a few months; I guess it all depended on his disposition. I hoped some day a bomb would jam in its bay and blow him and his Dornier to smithereens. After completing the laborious parking procedure, the truck’s left wheels cracking pavement stones, I jumped down from the cab and made a fuss of Cagney, who’d been waiting for me.
I ruffled his ears, something he didn’t like, never had, and he growled low and menacing, so I did it some more. Before he got too riled I hugged him to me and got a face full of tongue for my kindness. The taste of dust didn’t seem to bother him and he would have slobbered me to death if I hadn’t stood and pushed him down when he reared up with me. Taking the hint at the second shove, Cagney trotted off back along the street, making, to my surprise, straight for Cissie, who was still sitting on the kerb observing us.
Cissie averted her gaze before I reached her, studying some point in the distance, her neck and shoulders kind of stiff-like. I sat next to her, laying my leather jacket with its added weight of Colt .45 on the ground between us.
‘Hyah,’ I ventured.
‘Hello,’ she responded without much interest.
Cagney settled in the middle of the road, facing us, head resting on his paws. He yawned as he watched us.
‘Hot day again,’ I said, making conversation.
The back of Cissie’s head bobbed in agreement Today she was wearing a dark-brown dress that matched her hair, puffed at the shoulders, slim at the waist. No stockings and, when she finally turned my way, I saw she wore
no make-up. She eyed the dust in my hair, on my hands, on my face, but ignored it for the moment.
‘Is that your dog?’
‘He’s nobody’s dog.’
‘He was waiting outside when I came down for a breath of fresh air. I thought he was a stray.’
‘He didn’t run away?’
‘He was wary at first, so I just sat there and talked to him and after a while he came over and sort of slouched down next to me. Wouldn’t let me pat him though, moved away every time I tried.’
‘Cagney doesn’t like people very much. Seems to think they’re to blame for everything that’s happened.’
‘Did you say Cagney? His name’s Cagney?’ At last her face cracked into a smile. ‘After James Cagney?’
‘Well his real name’s probably Rex or Red, but he wasn’t saying when we met up. I decided on Cagney and the mutt didn’t seem to mind.’
‘Has he been with you for long?’
‘Coupla years, maybe.’
The sun beat down on the dusty roadway and pretty soon Cagney’s eyes drooped shut. I took a rumpled rag from my pants pocket and wiped sweat from the back of my neck and underneath my chin.
‘D’you have any idea what time it is?’ Cissie asked, a coolness still there in her tone.
I looked over my shoulder and squinted up at the sun. “Bout four, I’d guess. Busted my watch way back, had no use for it anyhow. Hell, I got no appointments to keep.’
‘So where have you been all day?’ She was looking directly at me now and I wondered at the suspicion in her eyes. ‘You left before any of us were awake. Even before Muriel was awake, apparently,’ she added meaningfully.
This time I looked away, staring up at the hotel’s taped windows. The thought that so much death lay beyond them was depressing. ‘I had things to do,’ I replied eventually.
She must’ve understood that was all I had to say on the subject, because she didn’t push it any further. I liked her for that.