Out of the Blackout (23 page)

‘No?'

Connie giggled.

‘You can guess the reason, because it was thanks to you, mostly. But still, I
knew
it couldn't be suicide, because I knew Len. He'd never have had the nerve. They say bullies are always cowards. I have my doubts, because in her prime Ma was one without being the other. But Len, now: he was both. Thank God. Because he'd have been the world's nastiest bully if it hadn't been that he was yellow to the core. Len would never have been brave enough to chuck himself in front of a train.'

‘But who on earth would push him?'

‘Think! You knew all about him, didn't you? He wasn't liked at work, you know, and that's putting it mildly.' She leaned forward again, putting forward her theory with a relish that amounted to gloating. ‘It's my belief one of the blackies working on the Underground pushed him. God bless him! Though it could equally be one of the whites. There were plenty of those that hated him for his politics. And Len was just naturally un-likeable, let's face it.'

‘You don't seem to dislike the idea.'

Connie wobbled back in her seat and smiled a smile of immense complacency.

‘Why should I? I'm afraid I'm not a hypocrite. I say what I think. I'd nothing to be grateful to Len for. It was the same with him as with Mother: there wasn't a soul to mourn them. And of course I got the house!'

‘That was lucky,' said Simon. He did not bother with genteel circumlocutions, since Connie so obviously rejected them.

‘Yes, wasn't it? He left no will, and Teddy said he didn't want any Simmeter property. He's retired now, by the way, and living very comfortably in Southsea. He's got a wife, you see, and one of the kids is still with them, so Teddy's lucky. Deserves it, though. He comes to see me every time he comes to London.'

‘So everything has worked out nicely for you. I'm glad.'

‘Not at all bad. Not that I've
enough
money, mind, but I didn't squander what I got from Ma, and then with the income from the lodgers, I can get most of the things I want.' She gave Simon a roguish wink. ‘In the material line, anyway! If I go careful the money will see me out. Thanks, I will have another, since you're so kind.'

When Simon returned with the means to retank her, he said:

‘So Len's last years weren't happy, then?'

‘No. And why should they be? I never moved out—kept meaning to, but never summoned up the energy. So we were both living together. He'd have liked to have me slaving away for him in the house, like Mary used to, but I could always scare the living daylights out of him just by mentioning your name. After all those years, when he thought the whole business was buried deeper than Australia, to have you pop up and point the finger! Marvellous!' She chuckled appreciatively. ‘I do think you were clever to find it all out!'

‘Oh, I don't know about that,' said Simon, sitting back easily in his chair, and watching her. ‘I certainly wouldn't say I'd got to the bottom of the business then.'

‘I thought you did pretty well!' The chuckle changed to a vengeful laugh. ‘And Len thought you did a pretty thorough job too!'

‘But really there were big gaps in what I knew,' said Simon
easily, hoping that to tease her out would be more effective than accusing her. ‘For example, I knew nothing about Ted.'

Connie looked up at him sharply, but on consideration she relaxed over her gin, scarcely less pleased with herself than before.

‘I don't see there was any need for you to know anything about Ted.'

‘He was in the house, all the period we were discussing. I think it's funny nobody ever mentioned him.'

‘He
wasn't
mentioned much—even while he was there. After he'd gone we hardly mentioned him at all. Naturally, I'd have thought. Anyway, you Spurlings knew all about him.'

‘I didn't. I should have realized when I read that letter of Mary's, where she sent her love to Ted. Not Teddy. Nobody ever seems to have called your brother Ted. And by 1941 he wouldn't have been at home—especially spring '41. He'd have been up in the air, flying planes.'

‘That's right. He was. Things might have been better if he had been at home. You're right—we did call the boy Ted, to make the difference. I
am
surprised you didn't know about him. After all the fuss you Spurlings made when he was on the way!'

Simon chanced his arm.

‘Because he was illegitimate?'

‘Of course.' Her eyes clouded over, and a bitter expression took possession of her normally good-humoured face. ‘You young people: you've no idea what it was like then! The shame we were supposed to feel . . . And the Spurlings being chapel people as well—that made it a real scandal, something only talked about at home, under their breaths. Teddy told me that as soon as they got whisper they were round at Farrow Street, demanding that I keep away from the district, and that I call myself Mrs. You'd have thought one or the other would have done, wouldn't you?'

‘They were worse than your own family?'

‘Oh, Ma and Len were bad enough. The fuss! They offered me a weekly pittance to stay away, and when I said I'd come round to discuss it, Ma said, “Then you come after dark!” It was a real laugh, that meeting. I remember when they put it to me that I should take a married name—I'd been going to, anyway—I said: “All right. I'll take a married name. I'll take the name of the father.
I'll call myself Mrs Mandel.” Len blew his top! I really got a kick out of that. I felt I'd held my own.'

A firework rose and bloomed into showers of sparkles in Simon's brain. Ted Mandel. Edward Mandel. I know it. I remember it. It says something to me, as David Simmeter never did. I was Edward Mandel . . . I
am
not Edward Mandel, but I
was
him.

Connie had not noticed his reaction. She had interrupted her reminiscences to attend to her drink, with an old person's eagerness for the comforts of the present.

‘But why,' Simon asked, curious, ‘should Len blow his top?'

‘The name: Mandel. I remember he shouted: “But that's a Jewish name!” And I said: “Not so bloody surprising, since he's a Jewish boy.” All hell broke loose. Len kept wailing: “You're having a Jewish baby!” and I'd say: “Technically speaking, I'd say I have half shares in him.” Whenever Len or Ma said the word “Jewish”, they hissed it—in case the neighbours heard.'

‘Who was he, the father?'

‘He was the son of the family I worked for. Nice enough boy—a year younger than me. I left home, you see, round about 1932. Went to work in a shop first, and had a room nearby. I got in with this young left-wing crowd—very idealistic, you know. I suppose you'd call it a reaction against Len and Ma. Well, I always wanted to better myself—would have done, too, if the brat hadn't come along—and one of this crowd got me this job doing secretarial work, which was a step up, though not much of one. It was an organization to aid refugees from Nazi Germany. Really it was rich Jews here helping to get Jews out of Germany, but they tried to make it more general, played down that side of it, because there were plenty of people in the Conservative Party at the time who were pretty much of Len's way of thinking. So it suited them to employ a non-Jew. They were good people on the whole, but nobody's fools.'

‘I begin to understand,' said Simon. ‘I think I get it.'

‘So I was working at the Mandels' all day. They ran a chain of jewellers', but the committee I worked for operated from their home. The parents were mostly out during the day, and the boy—Isaiah was his name, would you believe it?—had just finished with school. He was eighteen or so. I suppose you could say that what happened was pretty much inevitable.'

‘And I imagine his family was less than pleased.'

‘You're not wrong!' Connie's mouth twisted with contempt. ‘See them letting their bright boy marry out of the faith! They packed him off to Edinburgh University—further away than Oxford.' Her face relaxed once more into its usual flaccid contentment. ‘Though if the truth were known, there was never much of what you'd call love between us. He was too fly to be easily caught, parents or no parents. Anyway, I was paid off. And I made them pay, and pay well! Otherwise I'd never have had the brat, or I'd have had it adopted. I thought it was my passport to the good life. Mind you, if I'd
known
the trouble a kid causes! . . . I was too green, that was my trouble.'

‘But you had two supplies of money coming in, though.'

‘That's right. I never told Len and Ma about the money I was getting from the Mandels, or they'd have cut off their subsidy. Tainted lucre! I had a little flat in Peckham, had the baby January 28th, 1936, the day the old King was buried), and all in all I wasn't too badly off. If it hadn't been for the baby I'd have been fine.'

‘You didn't care for him?'

‘I
cared
for him, in one sense; there was no one else to. I didn't
like
him. I can't imagine why women want babies. They ruin your life. I know Ted ruined mine.'

‘Why did you decide to go back to your family?'

‘I was afraid. It was as simple as that. It was early in the summer of '39. Everyone was talking about the coming war. I used to see Teddy once a week, when he brought the money from the family. He was a brick, Teddy was—that's why I named the boy after him. Well, with all this talk I got scared to death—invasion, air raids, occupation, that was all anyone thought about. And me alone in a tiny flat, with a kid to look after, and not a friend in the world. I put out feelers through Teddy, and got back the gracious message from Ma that it would be all right to move back if I called myself
Mrs
Mandel, and wore a wedding-ring. We'd all say my husband died. And that's what we did. At least there was somebody
there,
near me. I wasn't alone.'

‘I'd have thought it must have been a pretty unpleasant atmosphere to go back to.'

Connie shrugged, and smiled her complacent smile.

‘Water off a duck's back. I can ignore that sort of thing. I never liked fending for myself, you know. Slaving away to get meals, keep the little bugger clean and tidy—that wasn't my line at all. And at home was Mary, just waiting to be the substitute mother. That suited me down to the ground. And I don't mind telling you there was another reason: I thought that if Jerry
did
come over, it might be useful being Len's sister. I make no bones about thinking of my own skin first.'

‘But it didn't work out very well, I take it.'

‘Oh, not at all bad. From my point of view. It took most of the load off my shoulders. There was just the problem of Ted.'

‘I suppose,' said Simon, cautiously exploring an area of half-memory, ‘that it was mostly about Ted that Mary and Len argued—fought—in those years. You kept that from me before.'

Connie chuckled in rich and careless reminiscence.

‘Was it ever! From the beginning Len could hardly bear the sight of him. A Jewish boy in his house! Playing with his David! He tried to banish him from
his
part of the house, but it didn't work out.
I
wasn't interested in him;
I
wasn't going to have him clinging to my skirts all day. I'd moved back to see an end to that. So of course Mary had to look after him: she wasn't one to see a child moping and neglected and do nothing about it. So back Ted would be in Len's part of the house, as he called it. The looks he gave! If looks could kill! . . .'

‘He didn't actually mistreat him?'

‘He would have. He would have liked to. But Mary always stood in the way.'

‘Physically?'

‘Eventually that. First she said she'd go to the police if there was any brutality. Then she threatened to take Davey and go and live with her family. Her dad was dead—stiff-necked old bugger—but she had a whole host of brothers and sisters, as you know. That got through to Len, because of course Mary would have got custody of the child if there'd been any sort of separation. Gradually, though, he realized that Mary would never leave Ted in the same house as him. Funny woman . . . I never understood her . . . What was Ted to her? But she washed and cleaned for him, darned his clothes, till he was as well-turned-out as her David. I suppose some women just love kids. But it doesn't seem natural.'

‘And when he couldn't take it out on . . . on Ted, he started taking it out on Mary?'

‘That's it. Typical Len. First the odd cuff around the head, then real blows. Always about Ted. “The Yid bastard”, as Len used to call him. Sometimes it happened when he was there. Once or twice I caught him at night, listening on the stairs. The expression on that child's face! Well, I'm not sentimental, but it got through to me, I can tell you. He had nightmares about it. I know that because he slept in the next room to mine. Screamed out, moaned. I always let him have them out . . . They say it's better.'

A picture was forming: tiny sparks of memory were igniting, and illuminating dark corners of Simon's mind. The boy on the stairs, listening to the thumps and cries of fighting adults. The boy in bed, having his nightmare out, waking up drenched not in urine but in sweat. The boy in the hostile house, keeping out of sight of most of the members of it, with one badgered, beaten protector. The picture was forming slowly in his mind, as on an old, worn-out television set. But the lazy, scattered picture was helping him to understand that later picture: the little boy arriving at Yeasdon Station, determined to find a new family, new protectors.

‘What about that night?' he asked. ‘The night of Mary's death.'

Connie pursed up her mouth, as if at a distasteful memory.