Half a Crown (7 page)

“Oh, they’re sure to let us all go,” the first one said, comfortably.

“If they bring in a lot of politicals, they might let us go to make room,” said one of the streetwalkers to the other. “That’s happened before.”

“What’ll happen to you otherwise?” I asked, turning my useless shoe over in my hands and thinking again of Cinderella. What prince might find my other shoe and come seeking me? I didn’t think of Sir Alan but of the handsome young man who had sung and incited the riot.

“Fine,” the streetwalker said. “Ten shillings. Not so much. It’s much worse losing business spending the night in here. You got a fag?”

I shook my head. “I don’t smoke, sorry.” It always made me cough.

A woman on the bench along the back wall obliged and handed around cigarettes to most of the women in the room. “If they’d been really worried they’d have taken our smokes,” she said, sharing a light. “I wasn’t expecting no trouble or I wouldn’t have gone along, I just wanted to hear the bands and have a bit of a knees-up. That’s all rallies have been for a long time now. I haven’t been arrested at one since I was courting.” She looked at me. “You never been to one before, have you?”

“Not since I was a nipper,” I said. “My dad took me to one at Camden Lock once. Since then, no, but my boyfriend wanted me to come along with him tonight and it seemed like it would be a bit of fun.”

“Thought I hadn’t seen you before,” she said, clearly satisfied.

Just as I was congratulating myself on how easily I had blended in with these women, the motherly one sitting next to me noticed my skirt. It wasn’t true you could go anywhere in tweeds; Paddington Nick was obviously too rough for them. I had kept my coat buttoned so that they wouldn’t see my silk shirt and cashmere sweater,
but I couldn’t help my skirt showing. Part of it was muddy where it had been trodden on. The woman reached out and rubbed the cloth between her finger and thumb. “Nice bit of stuff you’ve got there,” she said. “Where’d you get that?”

“Second-hand stall at Camden Lock Market,” I lied. “Hardly worn at all. It’s my best skirt, my mum will skin me for getting mud on it.”

She gave me a shrewd look as if she was summing up my hair, bedraggled as it was, and my raincoat, and not quite believing me. It was a relief when a policeman came to the bars and called out two names. The streetwalkers answered. “Letting you two go, this time,” the policeman said.

“That’s a relief,” said a woman in turquoise, as soon as they had gone. “I didn’t like being in the room with them in case I caught a disease.”

Everyone else laughed, including the suspicious woman next to me. After a while, she offered me a barley sugar from a packet in her pocket, which I took gratefully. I was terribly hungry, and it was quite clear nobody was about to feed us. The sugar, or something, maybe just sucking the sweet, which I hadn’t done for ages, made me feel a bit better. Dad used to like barley sugar. He’d buy two ounces in a twist of paper from one of the huge jars in the sweetshop. They were golden like sunlight and terribly inclined to stick together. I don’t think I’d had one since he died.

It was very cold in the room, so nobody questioned my keeping my coat buttoned. I chanced a look at my watch after a while, when nobody seemed to be paying any attention to me. Ten o’clock. I should have been in the Blue Nile by now—a real nightclub. Mrs. Maynard usually wouldn’t let us go near them. If Betsy and Sir Alan had got away, he wouldn’t have taken her to a nightclub, not without me. They’d have gone home. Mrs. Maynard would be terribly worried about me. I wondered what she’d do. She’d probably wait a
bit in case I turned up, but after awhile she’d be sure to contact Uncle Carmichael, in which case I might be taken out of here at any moment. I tried counting time and working out how long it would take for Betsy and Sir Alan to get home, and then for Mrs. Maynard to decide to get in touch with Uncle Carmichael, and then for him to find out I was here and come to get me. At least another hour, I thought.

I didn’t want to ask for him, to say I was his niece, which wasn’t quite true anyway. I thought it would be better to come from outside. I didn’t entirely trust these bobbies to pass a message on to him quickly, and I didn’t want to attract their attention. Besides, there was a chance they’d just let me go without bothering him at all. I could always tell them later if I needed to. It was like having an ace in reserve. I decided to keep quiet and wait. I sat still, my coat around me, and fell into a doze. I don’t know how long I slept.

I was woken when another six women were pushed into the room. One of them had a huge red mark on the side of her face. Conversation turned to them and to the riot, which had apparently got completely out of control. The women had been at another police station, which was full, before being sent on here. “So whose side were you on, then?” a fat woman asked the woman with the mark.

“I wasn’t on either side, as such,” she said. “I was just trying to get away when I got clobbered. As for what they were saying, I liked the singing, but I didn’t like hearing things said against Mr. Normanby. It’s not as if it’s his fault he’s in his wheelchair, is it? Terrorists killed Sir James and they tried for Mr. Normanby, just like they’d kill us all if they had the chance.”

“That lad did have a point though,” said the woman next to me. “Mr. Normanby isn’t a really strong leader, not when you compare him to Hitler.”

I couldn’t believe she’d be foolish enough to say this, after the riot, and sure enough the marked woman spat at her, after which
the room erupted. Women who had been sharing cigarettes and sweets beforehand were clawing at each other and shouting names I hadn’t heard for years. I cowered on the bench, my bare feet tucked up under me. The police had to turn a cold water hose on two women to get them to stop clawing at each other. When they separated us, I went with the woman who had seemed friendly. We were put in another cell, almost the same as the first, but with a thin high window on one wall, through which I watched the dawn coming. Every so often a policeman would call a name, and a woman would go off to be processed, then be brought back and another name would be called. At last I slept a little more. I was startled out of an uneasy dream to hear my name called.

It wasn’t Uncle Carmichael, just an ordinary policeman, ready to process me as he had been processing the others. It must have been nearly midday by the light. The policeman made me walk in front of him down a badly lit corridor, then another policeman opened the door of a little cell. I stepped in, and had time to see dirty white tiled walls, a table, and two chairs before one of the men behind me pushed me hard in the middle of my back. I had to take a couple of running steps and then fell, banging my knee. I waited for a moment, on the ground, then got up slowly. “Sit down,” the policeman said. It was then I realized it hadn’t been an accident, he had quite deliberately given me a shove. I was furious.

“Why did you push me?” I demanded.

“Sit down, or do I have to make you?” he asked. He was quite a young man, red-haired. He sounded almost bored.

I sat down. It seemed like the best policy. He sat down on the other side of the table, and put my papers down in front of him, along with a file card. “Elvira Royston,” he said. “Just eighteen. Resident in Kensington.”

My papers had Uncle Carmichael’s address, of course. “I’m staying with a friend in Belgravia,” I said.

“What friend? Was he at the rally with you?”

“Elizabeth Maynard, and yes, she was,” I said, stressing the pronoun.

He looked me up and down, quite obviously, not even trying to hide it. “So a pair of young girls went quite unaccompanied to the rally,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Dangerous, that is, as you’ve seen.”

“Her fiancé was with us,” I said, stretching the truth. “Sir Alan Bellingham.”

I had hoped that Sir Alan’s name might mean something to the loutish officer, but he didn’t twitch. “Is that right?” he asked, making a note. “How do you spell that?”

I told him, and he wrote it down. Then he looked up again. “So whose side were you on when the fighting started?”

“Neither. I was just trying to get away.”

“And which side do you find more sympathetic? The singer, or Mr. Normanby?”

“I had no sympathies!” I insisted.

“You went with the British Power group when you fought in the cell,” he said, looking down at his notes.

“That’s just because—,” I started, but I couldn’t have told that cold cruel man about the barley sugar. “I have no sympathies,” I repeated, but I saw that he noted down
BP
next to my name.

“Let’s take you back, then,” he said, getting out of his chair.

“When will I be released?” I asked, coming cautiously to my feet.

“When we’re good and ready.”

“With what am I being charged?”

“Nothing, just yet. We can hold you for twenty-eight days on suspicion. We could charge you with plenty, though, if we like. Riot, incitement to riot, conspiracy to incite riot, terrorism, communism, anarchism.” He stepped a little closer, and I backed away, feeling the wall of the cell behind me. His hard eyes were green, and his eyelashes so pale it almost seemed as if he had none. “I wouldn’t be so
eager to be charged if I were you, Miss Royston. The Watch are very interested in finding out who caused this riot.”

“I do hope they are,” I said, deciding that it was now or never for playing my ace. “Chief Inspector Carmichael of the Watch is my uncle. He’s probably wondering where I am. I expect he’ll want to hear how I’ve been treated.”

When Carmichael got back to the Watch buildings, the rain was coming down in stair rods. He ran up the steps towards his own door, which the guard helpfully opened for him as he came close. When the building was being designed he had deliberately asked for the rows of doors, dwarfed as they were by the huge pillars. In the Yard there was no way in or out except under the watchful eye of the sergeant on desk duty. Here, each department had their own exit and entrance, and although there were always guards on duty under the portico, keeping an eye on who came and went, Carmichael felt that the psychological effect was different. “Lovely weather for ducks,” the guard said, and Carmichael favored him with a thin smile.

As he came down the hallway from the stairs, Carmichael removed his hat and skimmed it towards the heavy Victorian hat stand. It landed, as it did two times out of three, neatly on the top peg.

Miss Duthie was hovering outside his office. Normally she sat at a little desk in the capacious hallway, filtering his visitors, out of earshot when the door was closed and near at hand when he wanted her to make tea. Now she was pacing across the hallway. She looked very relieved when she saw him. “There’s a rather strange thing, sir,” she said. “They telephoned from Paddington, and spoke to me, and
then to Mr. Ogilvie, and he wanted to go over there to deal with it but I said he ought to
wait,
as you’d be back so soon.”

“Who telephoned?” Carmichael asked, beginning to take off his wet overcoat. Miss Duthie had no authority to give orders to Ogilvie, she wasn’t in the chain of command. “Is this urgent? I’d love a cup of tea.”

“I think it
is
urgent.” Miss Duthie’s brow was crumpled with distress. “The Paddington police telephoned. They said they had Elvira, that she’d been caught in that horrible riot.”

“Good God!” Carmichael froze, one arm in and one out of his overcoat. “You did absolutely right stopping Ogilvie, Miss Duthie, thank you.”

“I did think that as it was a
personal
matter, I might exercise my judgment,” she said, looking much happier.

“Quite right,” Carmichael said, shrugging his coat back on. “How did Elvira come to be—No, you don’t know, you couldn’t. I must go to Paddington right away.” He pulled the notes he had made in the Prime Minister’s office out of his pocket. “Give this to Mr. Ogilvie, and tell him to get on it.”

“Yes, sir,” Miss Duthie said, taking the paper. “Do you want to take Sergeant Evans with you?”

“No harm in it. Give him a call and get him to meet me out on the portico. Where the devil is my hat?”

“It’s on the hat stand,” Miss Duthie said, without looking, already dialing, her other hand patting her bun. “Paul? Chief Inspector Carmichael needs you to meet him on the portico immediately.”

Paul,
Carmichael thought as he walked briskly back the way he had come, settling his hat on his head. Miss Duthie was on first-name terms with all the sergeants and men, though she kept a strict formality with the officers, who she perhaps considered as her own social class. He had heard Sergeant Evans addressing her as Peg, though to Carmichael she was always Miss Duthie. If it hadn’t been for the security check he wouldn’t have known her first names were
Margaret Rose, after the princess. She might be a social oddity but she really could make tea. Besides, she wasn’t likely to go off one day and get married and leave him in the lurch, not at her age, and not with those big glasses. And she had done just the right thing in this Elvira matter; he wouldn’t have wanted Ogilvie going there and putting his big foot into what amounted to Carmichael’s private affairs. However did Elvira come to be in the riot? She wasn’t a little girl anymore. But what could have possessed her to go? And why on earth hadn’t that fool of a Mrs. Maynard, who was supposed to be looking after her, told him she was missing?

He stopped, halfway up the stairs. Was she missing, or was this a terrorist ruse to get him out of the office in a predictable direction so they could blow up his car? He turned back. It was just the sort of thing they’d try, the BFG, the Scottites, any of the more violent freedom groups. He didn’t really believe it, but he should check.

“Telephone Mrs. Maynard for me,” he called to Miss Duthie as soon as he was sure she would hear.

“I tried her, but the maid said there was nobody at home,” Miss Duthie said, dialing.

Carmichael snatched the receiver out of his secretary’s hand and listened to the slow pairs of rings at the other end. It was picked up by the maid. “They’ve just this minute come in,” she said, when he gave his name and asked for Mrs. Maynard. “I’ll hand you over, or no, sir, here’s Miss Betsy to speak to you now.”