Perfect Gallows (7 page)

The place was illegal. Andrew could feel it in his bones. The dockers were skiving off their shifts—you could tell from their low voices, their poses, their gestures. The tea and the sugar were sweepings out of a warehouse, the milk was missing from its consignment, the sausages too—a fortnight missing to judge by the cooking smells.

But Mr Trinder was at home here. That was the man's name, he said, Stan Trinder. He had other names, obviously. He'd brought Andrew to one of the railway-gates and stood in the shadow waiting, listening to the dock noises. There'd been a sentry on the gate, stamping to and fro with his rifle on his shoulder in the frosty moonlight. A train had come clunking up from the quays and the gates had opened. As the train churned through Mr Trinder had strolled over and spoken to the soldier on the near gate, then signalled to Andrew to join him. Nobody'd even looked at them as they slipped along beside the clanking trucks into the dockyard, and then on, keeping where possible to the shadows but walking with a casual, OK-to-be-here gait, to this den.

“Didn't hit it off with Sir Arnold's lot, then?” said Mr Trinder.

Of course Mum would have told him. You couldn't imagine her not.

“Too nobby?” said Mr Trinder. “You've got the voice, though.”

“Fuckin' right I 'ave. When I wannit.”

Mr Trinder raised his horse-shoe eyebrows. He was pale-faced, balding, with a big wet mobile mouth and soft brown eyes. He laughed his pleasant laugh but his eyes sharpened for a moment.

“Full of that type of trick, according to your mum,” he said. “Try it on Sir Arnold, then?”

“No. He just told me to clear out. He said it was because I refused to get drunk and I couldn't talk women, but really he took against the idea of me becoming an actor.”

“She told me about that too.”

“It's all I'm interested in. In fact I was glad Sir Arnold chucked me out, because I had a job lined up at the panto.”

“How's it going?”

“Fine. I was only expecting to help back stage, but I've got a part. That's where I'm sleeping, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah. Having any trouble with Toby?”

“A bit.”

“Heard how he was out. Stupid sod—never learns. You mention my name, though. That'll cool him off.”

“Thanks.”

“What are they going to do about the house, then?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Got a stupid sort of name. The something.”

“Oh, The Mimms. I don't know.”

“Cost a quid or two to run, place like that.”

“There's plenty of money. Nine and a half million pounds before death duties, somebody told me.”

“Now that is what I call money.”

Part of Mr Trinder's style was the steady softness of his voice, as though nothing in the universe could shake his inner citadel. Now the tone did not change, but he spaced the words out, showing that a tremor had got through. Andrew sipped at the sticky orange tea. It would have been disgusting anywhere else, but here it was part of the experience.

“Worth letting the old bugger have his way for that lot,” said Mr Trinder.

“No. Acting's the only thing that matters. I'm not even sure I want the money anyway. Nobody'd take you seriously. They'd always be saying you'd bought your way in.”

Mr Trinder tilted his chair and gazed at Andrew, nodding slowly.

“You'll change your mind,” he said. “Only then it'll be too late. The old bugger will've copped it.”

“The servants told me he won't get through next winter, according to his doctor.”

More meditative nods.

“There was these two brothers, way back, your mum told me.”

“Oswald and Arnold. They had a row and Arnold went to South Africa and made a lot of money in diamonds. When he came back he built The Mimms.”

“Let's take Oswald's side. He had just the one son, your grandad, right?”

“That's right, and the same with Dad and me. Three onlies in a row.”

“Clear enough. But old Arnold made more of a go at it.”

“He had a son and two daughters. They're still alive, Elspeth and May, but the son went missing in the last war. He was called Charles.”

“Missing? Your mum said as he was killed.”

“That's what I thought, but he was only missing. I suppose it comes to the same thing, though my Cousin May talked to me as if she thought he might still be alive. I don't think she believed it, just wishful thinking.”

“I know the sort. Now, according to your mum young Charles had gone and got married before he bought it. Had a son, what's more.”

“I didn't talk to my cousins about this, so I only know what Mum told me, and she didn't always get things right. I expect she told you too, anyway.”

“Carry on. She could've left something out.”

“OK. Charles got married on his last leave. She was a VAD who'd nursed him when he was wounded the year before. They didn't tell Sir Arnold till after the wedding. Then Charles went back to France and went missing in one of the big attacks. The son was born next year. He was called Nicholas. Sir Arnold tried to have him made a Ward of Court but Charles's wife fought him off. She took the baby to Australia, and married again. Nicholas joined up with the Australians when this war started. He was killed in Italy last year.”

“No funny business about that?”

“I don't think so.”

“No secret marriages either?”

Andrew shrugged.

“Right, so then the old bugger sends for you to give you the once-over, but he takes a scunner against you for wanting to be an actor. So all he's got left is the two old pussies.”

“The servants say he won't leave the house to them, not if he can help it. It's got to be a man.”

“And you're the only one going, only you don't want it. Stone me. Poor old bugger. After all that palaver.”

Mr Trinder laughed and stretched, then cocked his head and glanced at Andrew.

“You must be getting on for call-up,” he said.

“Next August, probably. Why?”

“Strikes me you're going to need to watch your step. Not that I'm what you'd call superstitious, but there's no denying things happen in threes. There's two heirs to the old bugger's fortune have gone and got themselves killed, fighting. Maybe you're doing right after all, saying you don't want it.”

Andrew summoned Adrian to smile at the fancy. Inside him the well of nightmare opened. It had been there for months now, but he had taught himself to keep the lid on it most of the time, except in dreams. It wasn't for himself, Andrew-now, that he was afraid. He could have put up with any amount of discomfort, exhaustion and pain if only he could magically have been given the promise that he would come through alive and start on his career. It was terror for Adrian-to-be that filled the well with its cold slow-churning mass, all that glorious future smashed, mown down by a machine-gun-burst trying to cross some bloody ditch. And the way that Mr Trinder had put it had added to the suddenness of the inward ambush, the casual tone, the argument not from solid provable daytime facts but ungraspable powers of luck and ill-luck. Mr Trinder stretched again, widening the gesture into a yawn.

“Trouble is,” he said, “I'm missing your mother.”

“So'm I.”

“Not what I meant. There was I, wandering along under the moon, licking my lips a bit, anticipating, if you get my drift …

“Yes, of course. I don't mind.”

“You're a good lad. Point is, if you won't think it heartless, I'm going to have to go and do something about it.”

“That's all right. If you'll just help me get out of the docks. Toby'll have gone home by now.”

They rose together. Mr Trinder shrugged himself into his coat and put his hat on. He laid a pound note on the table—far too much for a couple of mugs of tea—and weighted it with the sugar jar, but still made no move for the door.

“Pity you couldn't've kept the old bugger happy with a bit of chat,” he said.

“I could have if I'd wanted, in theory.”

Mr Trinder shook his head, dead serious.

“Much better do a bit of the practical. It's a lot different from how you imagine it.”

“Well …”

“I know a nice house. Girl there just right for a beginner.”

“I don't suppose I've got enough money.”

“This is on me. Owe it to the family, you might say.”

“All right. Thank you very much.”

FOUR

It had snowed again, rather more than a sprinkling this time, enough to make the search through the rubble of Number 19 an even more hopeless task. Still, there was just a chance, seeing the shelf which held the tea-pot had been on the very back wall of the house. The wall might have bulged out, and the tea-pot would only have been squashed a bit, being pewter, not broken. Andrew calculated the position and eased out a couple of bricks, inspecting their sides for the yellow kitchen distemper. No luck. He tried again, further right.

There'd been a bobby watching at the front, to keep scavengers off, but Andrew had walked straight past him and round through the back alley between the coal-sheds and the old outside toilets. The mound of rubble hid him from the street. He worked patiently, barely noticing how his fingers numbed and blundered. He was thinking about last night.

The girl had been called Minnie. A darkie, much blacker than Samuel Mkele, he thought, though it had been hard to be sure in the dim and smoky light. She wasn't at all pretty and reeked of sweat and cheap scent, but she'd giggled and squirmed and given every impression of liking what he did, and when it was over she'd said in broken English that he was very nice, very strong, very good. That was part of her job, Andrew guessed, but he'd also known in his bones it was true. From his side the experience had been thrilling, not because of physical enjoyment, which had been there all right, but something more important to him. It had been a parallel event to the scene earlier last night when the Dame had told the story about the siren and the sailors. He had been aware of this even at the time, and more and more so as he looked back. There was the same sense of mastery, of mysterious energies focusing into a moment, of the other partner (the audience, the black girl) being made by those energies to melt, to become so malleable that they answered to a whisper, to a touch—and also, with all that, with the pleasure and excitement, the dominant will detached and watching, chilly, contemptuous, amused.

Mr Trinder had said it wasn't a good idea for beginners to strain the machinery by trying too often, but Andrew was certainly going back soon. That was why he needed Mum's teapot. He had just bent to try a fresh place when a voice spoke above his head.

“Ullo-ullo, and what have we here?”

The bobby who'd been guarding the street side was looking down at him from the top of the mound. He stood up, not bothered at all, and let Adrian take over.

“This is my home, sir. I mean, it was.”

“That so? Tell us your name, sonny.”

“Andrew Wragge. I've got my Identity Card.”

“Told us you were staying away.”

“I've just come back.”

“Reported yourself at the station?”

“No … I thought … well, I wanted … something to remember her by.”

He'd judged it spot on, the stumblings, the catch in the voice, the courage.

“Poor lad. You won't find much. They've started to put a few bits and bobs in the coal-shed.. You're not supposed, but I'll nip back over and watch the street a couple of minutes, give you a chance. Then mind you clear off down to the station and report yourself alive.”

“All right. Thanks. Thanks very much.”

There was a little heap of near-rubbish on the coal-shed floor, the Mickey Mouse clock with its glass smashed but still ticking, the twelve-armed brass dancer from India, one brass bowl from the scales, two black enamel saucepans, a flat iron, the lace table-cloth for Sundays, the tea-pot. Something had hit the teapot making a dent across the top and wedging the lid tight, but he used the dancer's top-knot to lever it open. Far more notes than when he'd been in on Saturday. A couple of ration-books too. He counted the money—£19. 10s. 0d. Where …? Of course, Mr Trinder. She wasn't a whore, but she wasn't above a bit of a present, either. The ration-books were new. They had no names or addresses on the front and none of the coupons was gone. You could be sent to prison for that. Mr Trinder knew about prison. He'd talked about Toby being “Out”.

Andrew put two of the notes in his wallet and the rest in his shirt pocket, right in under his coat and pullover, then stood weighing the ration-books in his hand and thinking. Suppose one of them had been a blank identity card … Andrew, dead in the bombing after all, disappears. Adrian begins his existence. He has a ration-book and identity card, but he has never been registered for call-up. He is invisible to the war-monster. The machine-gun waiting at the ditch will clatter its bullets through blank space …

Too late. He'd already told the bobby he was alive. And in any case it wasn't worth it. The most important thing was to stay clean. Just the same way you kept your body fit with exercises every morning so that you'd be up to the physical demands of any part you might one day play, so you kept yourself fit in other ways. A career was like Dad's ship, sliding through the ocean but liable to gather as it went encrustations, trailing growths, slowing it down, clogging it almost to a standstill. You wanted as little of that as you could manage, no alliances, no obligations. Perhaps Mr Trinder could have found a blank identity card for Adrian, but in finding it he would have suckered himself on to the hull, trailing unseen lengths of his other interests behind. There must be none of that. Andrew wasn't even going to give him back the ration-books, because then there'd have been a slight connection. He wasn't going to hand them in at the police station either. There'd be questions.