Read the book: «This Lovely City»

For Mum and Dad, for everything.

‘Ever so welcome, wait for a call.’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

‘It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.’

ENOCH POWELL

Contents

Cover

Praise

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dediation

March 1950

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

April 1950

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

December 1950

Chapter 27

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

March 1950

‘All fish does bite but shark does get di blame’

WEST INDIAN PROVERB

1

The basement club spat Lawrie out into the dirty maze of Soho, a freezing mist settling over him like a damp jacket. He shivered and tightened his grip on the clarinet case in his right hand. He’d best hurry on home before the fog thickened into a ‘pea-souper’, as they called it round here. The hour was later than he’d have liked; the club had been packed and the manager always paid extra if the band stuck around, keeping the crowd drinking.

‘Done for the night?’ The doorman leaned against the wall by the entrance, waiting for the last stragglers to leave.

Lawrie nodded. He’d been invited to stop for a drink with the band after the last set but he had somewhere to be. The night’s moonlighting had been a last-minute call out. He’d already arranged to take Evie out to the pictures but he needed the money and his name was just getting known around town: Mr Reliable. Able to fit in with any band at short notice. Call Lawrie Matthews, he’s your man; he’ll play anything for a shilling or two.

It might be after three in the morning, but the street was still open for trade. Across the road a couple of girls loitered, hardly dressed for the March weather, their legs bare and their jackets open. They sheltered in a shop doorway, huddled together as they smoked. One of them called over to him but he pretended he hadn’t heard. That sort of entertainment wasn’t for him. A few minutes of pleasure taken in a dark piss-scented alleyway could not outweigh the guilt. This he knew.

Even back home in Jamaica, he’d never felt confident in himself, not like his older brother Bennie, but this city forced him even further inside himself. It was a chronic condition, like asthma or arthritis; he could go a day or so feeling perfectly normal and then just a word or a glance was enough to remind him that he didn’t belong. He liked working the clubs because he could just play his clarinet and get lost in the music. His fellow musicians respected him; many of them even looked like him. He revelled in the applause that came when his name was shouted out and he stepped forward to give his small bow and a smile, just the right side of bashful. But as soon as he left the warmth of the club, things changed. People looked and decided what he was without knowing a single thing about him. Most of them were well-meaning. Somehow that was worse.

He walked swiftly down to Trafalgar Square, putting on a sprint as he saw his night bus approaching, leaping on the back just before it pulled away and clambering up the steps to the upper deck. He sat down, panting slightly through exertion and relief.

Settled, he looked out of the window at the desolate streets rolling by. The city appeared defeated beneath the weak glow of the late winter moon, which lazily cast its light down on the abandoned remnants of buildings that looked flimsy enough to blow over in the backdraught, if only the driver would put his foot down. Almost five years now since VE Day, almost two years since Lawrie had landed at Tilbury, and the city was still too poor to clean itself up. Austerity they called it, as if giving it a name made it more acceptable to those struggling to make ends meet.

The double decker wound its lethargic way south of the river and Lawrie tried to stay awake. His eyes were heavy but the draught through the window kept him shivering enough that he didn’t nod off. He’d be home just in time to change into his uniform and swallow down some breakfast before heading out again to his proper job.

Jumping off at the Town Hall stop in Brixton, the last passenger left on board, he tugged his scarf up over his chin to ward off a wind that felt like icy needles stabbing against his face. By the time he turned the corner of his street his face was already numb and his gloved hand felt stiff around the handle of the clarinet case. He wiggled his fingers and looked down, checking they were still there.

Home at last; a chip of grass green paint flaking away from the swollen wood of the gate as he swung it open, the rough edge catching his glove. He let himself in the front door, careful to close it quietly behind him. Everyone would still be asleep; he could hear Arthur’s less than gentle snores through the thin wood of the door that led to what had been the front room before Mrs Ryan had to let it out for much needed cash. He silently pulled off his shoes and shrugged off his coat, hanging it up by the door, his trilby next to it.

Upstairs in his bedroom he stowed the clarinet safely away at the back of his wardrobe. He trusted his fellow residents well enough, but his mother had always preached that temptation could befall the best of men. That stick of rosewood had been his father’s before him. Irreplaceable. Maybe one day he would pass it on to a son or daughter himself. He’d dared to mention that dream to Evie only a few weeks ago, and her smile had given him hope.

It was a room that his mother would have been ashamed to offer her cook. Besides the wardrobe there was only space left for a narrow bed and just enough room on the floor for his friend Aston to sleep on when he was in town, which seemed to be less often in recent months. The small window, with a view from the back of the house, let in a little bit of light and a lot of draught. Lawrie had rolled up some newspaper and jammed it into the gap between the window and its frame, but that wasn’t enough to stop the inside of the glass from frosting over.

His uniform was ready on its hanger, but the cold had stiffened his fingers and it was a slow process; shedding the suit of a professional musician and putting on his everyday postman’s uniform. He blew on his hands, trying to get some warmth into them, but he already knew that only a hot mug of tea would work.

Down in the kitchen, he expertly lit the flame on the stove and stared out of the window as the kettle boiled. He fancied he could see the sky lighten slightly as the hour grew closer to dawn. The kettle began its low whistle, and Lawrie lifted it off the ring before it could wake anybody with a full screech. Mrs Ryan would be up early so he made a full pot, tugging the hand-knitted tea cosy around it so that she could have a hot cuppa as soon as she came down. He always let it sit a good long while. He’d never been a big tea drinker before meeting Mrs Ryan, so he’d become used to the way she brewed it. He kept one eye on the time as he clasped the mug, his fingers softening, the feeling returning, as he sat at the table and enjoyed the silence and warmth of the kitchen.

When the clock hands read half past four it was time to go. Lawrie wrapped up again in his heavy coat and the deep burgundy scarf that Evie had knitted him for Christmas. Reluctantly, he forwent his beloved lined leather gloves for the bobbled fingerless ones that did what they could to protect his precious hands against the elements while still allowing him to work easily. Pausing before unlatching the door, he took an extra few seconds to adjust his postman’s cap on his brow before the long, age-speckled mirror, his forehead bisected by a crack in the glass, courtesy of a V-1 that had fallen in the next street in darker days.

‘Oi!’ Derek, Mrs Ryan’s son, stood at the top of the stairs, just out of bed and wearing only an off-white vest and pants. His mother would have words if she saw the state of him. In his hand was a brown paper package. ‘Take these over to Englewood, would you? Usual place.’ He threw the package down and Lawrie caught it lightly, nodding his consent. More black-market stockings, he guessed. Rationing had made Derek a fortune. He tucked the package away in the hallway cupboard to collect after his shift.

The sorting office was only a ten-minute walk but Lawrie had to be early. He had to be the first to arrive. He glanced up at the house next door as he pulled the front door closed behind him, but Evie’s window stayed dark. Not yet five and she’d be fast asleep. Last summer the early dawns had woken her, the sun rising to greet the city as he left for work. He’d pause and wait, turning when he heard the scrape of her sash window opening up. They’d never speak – she’d hold a finger to her lips and smile down at him worried that her mother would hear, even though she was unlikely to. Agnes Coleridge took sleeping pills and snored louder than any man Lawrie had heard, the rumble audible through the party wall. He’d smile back and Evie would blow him a kiss as she rubbed sleep from her eyes. And even though the dark mornings had put paid to this small joy, he couldn’t help but pause for a moment beneath her window. Just in case.

‘You!’

Lawrie stifled a groan. ‘Sir?’ He turned to face Eric Donovan who was waddling down the aisle in his direction, his creased shirt already coming untucked from trousers whose waistband looked to be on the verge of capitulation.

‘Get a move on today, boy, you hear? Second lot’s gone out late twice this week already.’ The words were barked around an unlit Woodbine that perched on Donovan’s narrow bottom lip; the slimmest part of him.

‘Yessir.’ Lawrie had never headed out late, but he’d learned there was nothing to be gained in talking back to the boss.

‘And don’t forget my order.’ Donovan lowered his voice, Lawrie nodding to show he understood. Donovan’s sweet tooth kept Lawrie in his good books, Derek supplying bags of white sugar to maintain Donovan’s addiction.

Lawrie put his head down and got on with the sorting while his fellow postmen straggled in, the air filling with a cacophony of male voices. Joining in with the general banter cheered him up by the time he’d got his bag packed, hefting it across his back and adjusting his stance to accommodate the weight. His walk took him back down his own street – past Evie’s house – so he didn’t complain, despite it being one of the heavier routes.

Evie answered the door when he knocked at the Coleridges’, a round of toast in one hand and a shy smile on her face that brightened his mood in an instant. He didn’t deserve a girl this beautiful, not after what he’d done, and yet here she was.

‘Anything for me this morning, Mr Postman?’

‘Always.’ He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips, one eye checking over her shoulder in case her mother made a sudden appearance. He didn’t take it personally that he was forbidden to cross the threshold. He was sure that Mrs Coleridge would have said as much to any man who was wooing Evie. After all, his skin was barely a shade darker than her own daughter’s. Evie’s father had returned to wherever he’d come from without knowing he had a baby on the way, leaving Agnes Coleridge holding a mulatto child. No wonder she had a disposition as bitter as quinine.

‘Evie! Shut that door, will you? D’you want me to catch my death?’ The kitchen door slammed.

‘Don’t mind her.’ Evie pulled the door to behind her and wrapped her arms around her body, a flimsy protection against the cold, standing there in a plain blue cotton dress, navy jumper and her house slippers. ‘You got time for a cuppa? I can bring it out.’

Lawrie adjusted his bag across his back so that there was space for her in his arms, pulling her off the step and holding her tight to keep warm. ‘Not today.’

‘Is it Donovan? You should tell him what’s what.’ Evie fussed with his scarf, making sure his tender skin was protected.

‘I can manage him just fine.’ Lawrie stole another kiss before letting her go. ‘Just one letter today, ma’am.’ She laughed and took it, pressing the palm of her other hand to his cheek. ‘I’ll call round tonight when you’re home from work. You have a good day now.’

She leaned against the doorframe and watched as he made his way up the street, pushing envelopes into letterboxes, just as she did every day, whatever the weather. It was a miracle she’d never caught a cold, but Mrs Ryan reckoned that love did something strange to a body – that if it could be bottled or turned into pills it would make penicillin look like an old wives’ remedy. At the corner, he turned back to wave and blow a kiss. She never went inside until he was out of sight.

Towards the end of the day, as he sat in the police station, he would wonder if in this moment he’d jinxed himself – walking around with that stupid grin on his face as if he were the luckiest man alive.

The morning followed its familiar rhythm. First man back at the sorting office, first back out with the next delivery, smirking at the look of disappointment on Donovan’s face. He had a little gossip with Mrs Harwood as he gave her a hand carrying her shopping bags home and thanked Mr Thomson for a racing tip that he wouldn’t use himself but would pass on to Sonny who loved a little gamble. Lawrie clocked off in the early afternoon, declining the offer to join the others in the pub down the street. He tried to go with them once or twice a week, but only because he felt he should. He liked a game of snooker or dominoes but he really didn’t have a lot in common with these men: mainly married, mainly ex-servicemen, all white. Besides, he still had Derek’s delivery to make.

He made a short detour home to pick up his bicycle and the package. Englewood Road was on the south side of Clapham Common, a place that was close to home; that green expanse of open land beneath which he had spent his first few nights in England. He remembered arriving there, that summer of 1948, and wondering how the sun could be so bright and yet so chill. And then they’d led him into the deep-level shelter, laughing at his terror at being underground, and fed him tasteless sandwiches along with the rest of the Windrush passengers who were unfortunate enough to have nowhere else to go.

The south side of the Common was busy with traffic, those famous red buses no longer a sight that thrilled him. At weekends the paths that cut across the Common would be much busier: couples strolling, children playing, fathers teaching their sons to sail boats on the ponds or feed the ducks. This was where he’d first set eyes on Evie, and where they’d had their first real kiss the summer before, sitting in the deep grass on a long hot Saturday afternoon. In better weather the air would be full of the shrieks of young children playing games, the chatter of their mothers as they exchanged gossip and pushed their progeny in huge Silver Cross prams that forced Lawrie from the path and onto the grass.

On this cold March afternoon, only the odd dog walker had ventured out. At this time of day he often saw these middle-aged women with their precious pets emerging from the large houses that surrounded the Common to walk their pampered animals in circles. Their children were grown and their housework managed by a housekeeper or a charlady, someone like Mrs Coleridge who did for a family over on the north side. They came striding along with an entitlement that Lawrie would never possess, letting their dogs off the leash and looking the other way as their beloveds squatted and left the mess for someone else to step in. Just before he reached Eagle Pond, Lawrie looked up and saw one such woman coming towards him, veering to one side as she walked briskly down the centre of the path; there was a Jack Russell trotting along at her heels, and if Lawrie had learned anything in his postal career it was to watch out for those little bastards. The woman stared as he rode past, and he knew that if he looked back she’d be watching him. Making sure he kept moving and didn’t hang around like a bad smell.

The lady who answered the door at Englewood Road was no better. Barely two words to say to him, neither of them wasted on thanks, but the money felt comforting in his pocket. Lawrie’s cut was twenty per cent, bargained up from ten the year before. Derek needed a trusted delivery man, he’d argued. Someone who didn’t look suspicious knocking on a door and handing over a brown paper package. Who better than the local postman?

Maybe he should take Evie out, he mused. Not just to the pictures. The boss of the club where he’d played the night before, he’d mentioned a few times that he’d get Lawrie a good table if he wanted to bring his girl along. Lawrie always smiled back and thanked him for the offer, said that he’d let him know. He wasn’t sure what he was wary of. There was no shame in playing music for a living. It wasn’t as though Evie didn’t know what he did but he liked that she was separate from all that. The women who frequented the club, not all of them but a few, they reminded him of his mistakes. They reminded him of Rose.

He cycled back the way he’d come, recognising the woman he’d seen with the terrier as he drew close to Eagle Pond, but the dog was nowhere to be seen. There was something strange about the way she was moving, and he found himself slowing down. She was pacing up and down in front of the pond, looking for something. Her gait was lopsided and, when she drew closer, he saw that her face was wet from tears that were blinding her. She didn’t notice Lawrie until the last moment, suddenly aiming towards him and coming up short as she took him in properly. She held herself rigid, her mouth gasping for air that her lungs didn’t seem to want to accept.

‘Ma’am?’ Lawrie swung his leg and dismounted, making his movements slow so that she didn’t spook. ‘You all right? Can I help you?’

She looked over her shoulder but turned back to him, fixing her eyes on his uniform. Whatever she’d seen was more frightening than one skinny black man. And there was no one else in sight. ‘You – you’re… a postman?’ Her tongue tripped as she spoke.

‘Yes, ma’am. Do you need help?’

She nodded and pointed in the direction she’d come from, a ragged sob creasing her body.

He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary at first. There was the pond, and there he spied the terrier. The small dog was soaked through. Barking urgently at him, it ran back towards the water.

‘The pond.’ The woman squeezed out the words and he noticed now that her hands were filthy, her coat spattered with mud.

‘There’s something in the pond?’

It was useless. She had begun to shiver, her teeth actually chattering as shock took hold. Lawrie laid his bike down on the grass and headed towards the pond on foot. The dog was still barking in a fury, running laps between the edge of the pond and the path.

‘What you got, boy?’

The dog splashed into the water, checking back to make sure he was being followed. There was a bundle there, a dirty blanket that once had been white. Lawrie crouched by the edge next to a smaller set of footprints that must have belonged to the woman. It didn’t look like much, this wad of sodden wool, but that didn’t stop fear from squeezing his chest tight as he reached out with his right hand, the palm of his left sinking into freezing mud as he tried to keep his balance.

He strained his arm and caught an inch of fabric between two fingers. Pulling gently, the bundle moved closer and he grabbed a tighter hold. The wool was heavy with water. White and yellow embroidered flowers peeked out from beneath the pond filth. Daisies. When he lifted it the bundle was heavier than he’d anticipated, but it wasn’t the weight that sent him crashing to the ground – only sheer luck landing him onto the bank rather than into the water. His heart pounded his ribs so hard that he glanced down at his chest, expecting to see it burst out through his coat, scattering buttons onto the ground.

The blanket lay there on the grass, the bundle coming apart. A baby’s arm had escaped, along with a shock of dark curly hair and a glimpse of a cheek. It could have been a doll, but one touch had been enough to convince him that it wasn’t. The hand was frozen stiff but the skin gave as his fingers had brushed against it.

Someone had left a baby in the pond to die. A baby whose skin was as dark as Lawrie’s.

2

Typing had a rhythm to it that Evie enjoyed. When she was in a good mood, more often than not these days, she sang along quietly to the tapping of the keys as she transcribed Mr Sullivan’s letters. He called her his little songbird and had been known to pat her on the head like a child, but he was a nice older gentleman and she knew she was lucky to have him. When his last secretary had left to get married, Evie had only been in the typing pool for a few months. Mr Sullivan’s single stipulation for her replacement was that she should be the fastest and most accurate typist. Mrs Jones, the pool supervisor, had sent Evie upstairs with a sly smile on her lips, and Evie had braced herself for his polite excuse but Mr Sullivan’s jaw had only dropped half an inch when he saw her, quickly masked by a smile, and it was Evie who had skipped back downstairs to whisk away Mrs Jones’s smirk along with her coat and bag.

She loved her job at Vernon & Sons. A light and airy office on the third floor, a desk by the window so that she could indulge in the odd daydream, and her best friend sitting right opposite. Delia was attached, professionally speaking, to the young Mr Vernon, the boss’s son, and would fix a tight smile to her face each time she had to untangle herself from his wandering hands and their clammy palms, her head turned away from his halitosis. As Ma often said, thank goodness Evie had not been born pretty and blonde. Not that Delia was a bad typist, only the young Mr Vernon had his own set of requirements when it came to secretaries.

‘I’ll be off now, Evie.’ Mr Sullivan emerged from his office, hat on head and overcoat slung over an arm. ‘I’m taking a slightly longer lunch today but you won’t tell anyone, will you?’ He winked and grinned, in the manner of a kindly uncle to his favourite niece.

Evie smiled conspiratorially. ‘I’ll not say a word. Off anywhere special?’

‘Just to see the kiddies.’ His eldest daughter had two of her own now and lived just off Lavender Hill, only up the road. ‘I’ll be back by three if anyone needs me.’

She waved him off. It was one o’clock and the offices were all emptying out; she could hear doors opening and closing throughout the three floors that the company occupied, echoing up and down the staircase. The girls would be heading to the small staffroom, or outside if they were brave enough, to eat their sandwiches. The men would be going out to a café or home for a hot meal, to see their wives, or mistress in the case of the young Mr Vernon – he’d packed his wife off to Surrey during the war and never thought to bring her back.

‘You almost done?’ Delia whizzed a sheet of paper from her typewriter with a flourish. ‘I’m starving.’

‘Two ticks.’ Evie locked her drawer. Things had a habit of going missing when she didn’t.

‘Off out are you?’

Evie looked up, stifling a groan. The suspected thief herself was standing in the doorway, her lip curling upwards in a sneer as she stared at Evie.

‘Hello, Mildred,’ Delia said, raising her voice. ‘Can we help you?’

Mildred sidled into the room. ‘We’re having a whip round for Hilda. She’s getting married a week on Saturday.’

‘Hilda?’ Delia pulled a thoughtful face, pretending she didn’t know who she was. Hilda and Mildred were thick as thieves, each as spiteful as the other. ‘Is she one of the typing pool girls? They all look the same to me.’

Evie saw Mildred’s face flush.

‘Are you going to put anything in or not?’

‘I think I can spare a bit of change.’ Delia reached for her purse and dropped a few coins into Mildred’s palm.

Mildred scowled and closed her hand around the loose pennies. ‘Don’t worry, Evie, I don’t expect you to chip in. I know you’re hard up.’

Evie’s jaw dropped as Mildred smirked, disappearing before Evie could think of a smart retort.

‘I’d love to give her a good smack,’ Delia said.

Delia had been Evie’s best friend since the first day of school. All the little girls and boys had been dressed up in new uniforms, drowning in oversized clothes that their mothers prayed they would not outgrow before year end. Agnes Coleridge knew well by then what the other mothers would whisper about her at the school gates, and she wouldn’t give them more ammunition than they already had. A talented seamstress, she had sewed Evie’s hem so that she had a properly fitting skirt that could be let out as she grew. Evie had cried that morning as her mother cursed and plaited her hair, pulling tighter until she’d quashed its rebellion. Ma had wiped her daughter’s tears with a damp flannel and kissed her forehead roughly.

At the school gates Evie had been unsure. Most of the children seemed to know one another but the Coleridges had only just moved to Brixton from Camberwell the week before. Ma had given her a little shove towards the teacher and told her she’d be back at the end of the school day. Miss Linton was young and smiley, her glasses making her hazel eyes look like giant marbles. She was too young to know what to do when Mildred had thwarted her seating plan by refusing to sit next to Evie. Delia was the one who shoved her hand straight in the air when Miss Linton asked for a volunteer to change places.

Like a bad smell Mildred had always been there in the background, impossible to get rid of. Nothing wound Mildred up more than knowing that Evie and Delia occupied privileged desks upstairs while she languished down in the typing pool with her poor WPM and tardy timekeeping. Evie had caught her before, sneaking around her desk when she thought that Evie had left for the day. She fingered the key to her desk drawer lightly and dropped it into her pocket.

‘Usual?’ Delia asked.

Evie nodded as they pulled on their coats and went downstairs, emerging onto St John’s Road, just up from Clapham Junction station. The street was busy as usual, buses piling down in both directions, but they were only heading to the café next door.

‘Egg and chips twice and tea for two, please.’ Delia waved the menu away as they sat at their usual table, delivering their order to the waitress. ‘Honestly, I don’t know why she bothers asking. Are you seeing Lawrie tonight?’

Evie shook her head. ‘The band got a regular Thursday night gig in Soho. It’ll be just another evening in with Ma. She’s taken on too much piecework again and I said I’d help out.’ Not that she’d have been given a choice but it felt better to imagine that her mother was like anyone else’s.

‘What about tomorrow after work? Fancy coming shopping? I need to get some new shoes. These ones are worn through.’ Delia stuck her leg out from under the table so that Evie could see the stretched leather, her big toe almost through at the front as she wiggled it around.

‘All right but it’ll have to be quick. I want to see Lawrie before he goes into town – Friday nights they play at the Lyceum.’ She barely saw Lawrie during the week these days; a musician in great demand, their relationship was becoming a series of stolen moments between their day jobs and the band’s growing popularity.

Delia smiled wryly. ‘I see how it is. Lawrie comes first. You’ll be getting married before long and I’ll never see you no more. You’ll be spending your days baking pies for Lawrie’s tea and popping out beautiful brown children for him. And you’ll remember that once you had a friend who you used to have fun with but now she’s a dried-up old spinster and you don’t have time for her.’

‘Stop it!’ They were both giggling now. ‘Besides you’re a long way off becoming a spinster. And if I do get married then you’ll get to be my bridesmaid.’

‘I’ve been a bridesmaid. Twice. It’s not as exciting as you seem to imagine.’ Delia’s nose wrinkled.

They both fell silent while the waitress plonked down a heavy tray laden with teapot, cups and saucers, milk, sugar.

‘Tell you what we should do.’ Delia lifted the lid to check on the tea, determining that longer was required. ‘Let’s go to the Lyceum tomorrow night and see Lawrie play.’

Evie bit back her immediate response, to say that her mother wouldn’t let her. She was eighteen after all. She could leave home any time she wanted, marry Lawrie if she felt like it without having to ask permission. And she’d rather face up to Ma than lie.

‘Yes, let’s do it,’ she said, with more resolution than she felt.

Their food arrived and Delia wondered aloud if a dress the colour of her vivid egg yolk might not suit Evie. Evie laughed and shook her head, looking up to see their waitress standing at the door just behind Delia, deep in conversation with a local bobby. The policeman had popped in to grab what looked like a sandwich, parcelled up in paper, but something in the urgency of his manner made her stop and listen in closer, tuning out Delia.

‘… don’t know what the world’s coming to,’ the waitress was saying, holding out the bag.

‘Not the sort of thing you expect round here,’ the policeman agreed. ‘Something’s changed, and not for the better.’ He glanced at Evie as he spoke, his face flushing crimson as she held his gaze. He grabbed his paper bag and left with a nod to the waitress.

‘… and of course even bloody Mildred’s waltzing round on the arm of a chap these days,’ continued Delia, oblivious to Evie’s wandering attention. ‘Jack flipping Bent of all people.’

‘You wouldn’t want to be stepping out with him though, would you?’ Evie turned back to her friend. ‘Nothing much going on between them dirty ears of his.’ It was Evie’s turn to wrinkle her nose.

‘But there’s been no one decent since Lennie,’ Delia complained.

‘Really? You’re saying that man’s name in the same sentence as the word “decent”?’ Evie laughed. ‘You could do so much better, Dee. You’ll see, I bet you, tomorrow night you’ll be batting them away. And if not you can come backstage, meet the band.’ She said it as a joke but regretted it immediately.

‘Oh no, no penniless musicians for me, thank you,’ Delia said, before quickly looking down at her yolk-smeared plate. ‘I mean, Lawrie’s one of a kind, ain’t he? He’s got a proper job, not just scraping by playing a few tunes.’

‘Everything all right?’ The waitress came to clear their plates and broke the awkward silence that had descended upon the two friends.

‘Lovely thank you,’ Evie told her, remembering what she’d overheard. ‘Excuse me, sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but that policeman who was just in – did I hear him say that there’s been a murder?’

The waitress leaned down to speak in a hushed voice. ‘They found a baby drowned in one of the ponds on Clapham Common. Terrible, ain’t it?’

The girls nodded, wide-eyed, and the waitress carried off their empty plates.

‘Who’d do such an awful thing?’ Evie exclaimed, as Delia pulled a packet of Player’s cigarettes and a box of matches from her bag. ‘I suppose it’ll be in the papers tomorrow.’ She took the cigarette that was offered.

‘People shouldn’t be allowed to have children if they aren’t willing to do what’s best for them.’ Delia struck a match forcefully and held it out.

‘Maybe some people don’t have a choice.’ Evie leaned into the flame, inhaling deeply.

‘I don’t believe that. Most of us know to do what’s best. You know that.’ Delia blew a smoke ring, thinking it over. ‘That place is still open, isn’t it? Where your mother went.’

‘I suppose.’ Evie didn’t like to think about what might have happened if her mother had abandoned her there, at the home for unmarried mothers just off Clapham Common, not far from where this poor mite had been found. ‘Either way, they deserve to suffer, whoever’d do that to a child,’ she said finally.

As they packed up their things and prepared to head back to the office, Delia slid the topic of conversation back to the more pleasant territory of fashion. They decided to go along to Arding and Hobbs before they had to go back to work. Maybe she should think about buying something new to wear to the Lyceum. Lawrie might be working, but it would be their first proper night out together, and Evie wanted to look the part.

3

The room they’d left him in was inhospitable, but he supposed that was the point. Barely bigger than a large cupboard, it was windowless and even colder than outside. Lawrie watched his warm breath swirl like smoke beneath the harsh flickering of the bare fluorescent tube above him. Its relentless blinking made his head ache. The rectangular table before him was empty but for his own hands, fingers splayed across its dull scratched surface and his fingernails full of the same pond mud that coated his trousers and his coat. He wanted to change, to wash away the dirt on his hands that was making him itch. He’d asked for a glass of water but the policeman who’d left him in the room had not replied. Distant male voices could be heard along the corridor and he felt a coward for not going out there and demanding they give him something to drink.

The detective would be in soon. That’s what they’d told him. And it wasn’t like he was under arrest. He’d given a brief account by the side of the pond, his head turned away from that sad bundle on the grass. The constable had asked him to walk back to the station with him and give a full statement. Lawrie hadn’t been able to think of a good enough excuse for not complying.

Eyes open, eyes closed, it made no difference. He could still see that tiny hand and the curl of black hair fixed in his vision, hear the hiccupping sobs of the dog walker. He’d turned away when the foolish constable began to unwrap the blanket that Lawrie had closed up out of respect, staggering back with a yelp as he discovered why the woman was so upset. Served him right for doubting them, but for a moment Lawrie had hoped – had prayed – that he was mistaken. The woman had been allowed to leave once she’d given her brief version of events. She reckoned she hadn’t touched the body, though how she could have seen the baby without doing so, Lawrie didn’t know. He could still feel the weight of the bundle in the muscles that ran up his right arm, could still feel the swift release of that tension as he’d let it fall to the ground.

The door opened. ‘Lawrence Matthews?’ Lawrie nodded as the man entered. ‘Detective Sergeant Rathbone.’

The detective was smartly dressed, his jacket pressed and his dark navy tie neatly knotted. In his thirties, Lawrie guessed, with a narrow moustache and pockmarked cheeks that cried out for a beard. He sat down opposite and placed a manila folder between them. He didn’t look at Lawrie.

Rathbone pulled out a notebook, a packet of cigarettes and his matches, laying them neatly by the folder. He took a cigarette from the pack, not offering one to Lawrie. Striking a match, he sucked the flame into the open tobacco before shaking it out and dropping the spent match to the floor. There was no ashtray, and Lawrie found the careless action irritating, his lips turning upwards a little as he realised how ridiculous it was to bother about such a small thing.

‘What you smiling at?’ Rathbone looked up suddenly.

‘Nothing, sir.’ Lawrie leaned back and swallowed, his throat dry. ‘I just had a silly thought. That you could do with an ashtray.’

Rathbone cupped his hand behind his ear. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, son. You’ll have to speak more clearly if you’re going to keep on in that accent.’

‘Yes, sir.’ He slowed the pace of his words, but not too much in case Rathbone thought he was trying to be funny.

The detective pulled a pencil from his jacket pocket. ‘From the beginning then. Since this morning. I want to know exactly what you did, who you saw, everything. I’ll tell you if I want you to stop.’

‘Since this morning?’ Lawrie’s forehead creased as he thought back. ‘I left the house just before five o’clock.’ He paused and Rathbone waved him on. ‘Went to work same as always.’

‘You’re a postman?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Could this man not see the uniform he was wearing? ‘Sir, is there any chance of a glass of water?’

Rathbone arched an eyebrow. ‘Don’t change the subject. I said I’d let you know if I wanted you to stop talking.’

Lawrie blinked. ‘Yes, sir. Well, after I clocked off, around midday, I decided to go for a ride to Clapham Common.’

‘Why there? Why not Brockwell Park, somewhere closer to home?’

‘The sun was out and I thought… well, the Common is where I first stayed when I arrived in this country, see. I like it there.’ His palms were sweating now, thinking about that damned parcel. Guilt must be written all over his face.

Rathbone put down his pencil and looked him directly in the eye for the first time. ‘This all seems rather coincidental, don’t you think? Way I see it, you had no good reason for being by Eagle Pond.’

‘Wrong place, wrong time is all. I mean, do I need a purpose to use the Common? Does anybody?’ Oh God, he was babbling now. ‘Sir, it’s just a park after all. I was just passing by, I go there all the time. At least twice a week.’

Rathbone stared; Lawrie looked away first.

‘It is rather convenient though, you must admit.’ Rathbone tapped ash from his cigarette onto the floor. ‘A baby dies, through some manner or other, to be determined. Perhaps it’s a loved child, perhaps it was an accident or the family couldn’t afford a burial, perhaps at least the person responsible for her death regrets it. That’s what it looks like to me. He doesn’t want her body to go unfound. So he waits until dark before placing her body by the edge of the pond, knowing that people walk their dogs there. Then he starts to worry – what if she isn’t found? He goes back to check and lo! There comes our Mrs—’ Rathbone checked his notes. ‘Barnett. Perfect timing. She panics and, seeing a man on a bicycle, she runs towards him seeking sanctuary. He steps in and rescues the body as planned so it gets a proper burial. Make sense?’

‘The last bit, about her running towards me, yes.’ Lawrie sat up and leaned forward. ‘She was the one who found the…’ His tongue wouldn’t form the word. He’d barely touched the child but he could still feel the slip of its – her – skin against his, the catch of her tiny fingernails as he’d snatched his hand away. ‘You’ve got the woman’s statement right there in front of you. She was there first. She was the one made me go and look.’

‘Because there was no one else there.’ Rathbone fired out the words. ‘No one around but a nigger on a bicycle. You think she’d have gone to you for help if there’d been a single other person around?’

‘I don’t… I mean… what’s that got to do with me?’ Lawrie felt small all of a sudden, unprepared. He took a breath and tried to order his words. ‘I just went there for some fresh air, not looking for trouble.’

‘So when she says that you cycled past the pond once, then again not ten minutes later, you don’t think that seems like odd behaviour?’

‘No! And I did a good thing, helping that woman. I coulda just cycled off, you know? She was acting all hysterical, like a madwoman. And that dog of hers… But I could see there was something very wrong. I stopped to help.’

‘So what? You’re some kind of good Samaritan then?’ Rathbone sneered.

‘My mother brought me up to have good Christian values.’ Lawrie fought the rising wave of humiliation that made his skin prickle. His mother would be horrified if she could see him now.

More notes were made with that sharp pencil. Lawrie tried to swallow but his mouth was too dry; he coughed uncomfortably as his breath caught in his throat.

‘You saw the baby though.’ Rathbone watched him keenly. ‘Definitely one of your lot, wouldn’t you say? Maybe it wasn’t you after all, maybe you were just helping a pal?’

Lawrie looked down as his hands, clenching them together in his lap to stop the shaking. They’d told him he wasn’t under arrest but he couldn’t imagine that the interrogation would be any more severe if he had been. He understood now why they had brought no water to him. He was supposed to be uncomfortable. They thought he was a murderer. At best Rathbone had him down as an accomplice. The air around him felt as thick as the bright yellow custard that Mrs Ryan served up for pudding on Sundays, too dense to breathe properly. Should he just confess? Tell Rathbone about the parcel he’d been delivering? But what if the woman at Englewood Road denied it?

‘You’ve nothing to add?’ Rathbone paused before letting out a weary sigh. ‘If I find out later that you’ve lied, things will go very badly for you, you know?’

‘I’ve told you everything I know.’ Lawrie blinked as more smoke was blown in his direction. Rathbone’s cigarette, together with the nicotine haze hangover from the jazz club the night before, was making his eyes smart. At this rate he may as well take up the habit himself. ‘I don’t know what else I can tell you. Speak to my boss. He’ll tell you that I spent the morning doing my job, not hanging around that pond like a ghoul. Talk to my landlady. I never been married, never had a child.’ Just in time he stopped himself from mentioning Evie. He didn’t want this man going round to the Coleridges’, questioning Evie about him while her disapproving mother looked on. ‘I’m not the only coloured person in London, you know.’

‘You’re speaking too quickly again.’ Rathbone raised his voice. ‘You seem agitated. Why is that?’

‘I’m not agitated, I’m just tired is all.’ He hadn’t slept for over twenty hours and fatigue was dulling his mind. ‘I’m hungry. And thirsty. I been here for hours and not even been given any water to drink.’

‘This ain’t The Ritz, son. We don’t do silver service here.’ Rathbone barked a laugh. ‘Look, you was the only darkie anywhere near the scene of the crime. No good reason for being there.’ Rathbone leaned forward until Lawrie could smell the stale tobacco on his breath, overflowing like a used ashtray. ‘Between you and me, I don’t give two shits about some dead nigger baby. Too many of you around here already, but the law is the law. A suspicious death has to be investigated and someone has to hang for it.’ He let the threat catch in the air before going on. ‘Tell me what I need to know and I can make sure it don’t come to that. I’ll get you a bed. A hot meal. A fresh brew. I tell you something, our cells are far more comfortable than some of them places your lot live in.’

Lawrie felt his chest tighten as his eyes pricked with tears; he would rather die than shed them in front of this man. He thought of his brother; Bennie would never let a man like Rathbone get the better of him.

Rathbone opened his mouth to speak once more but was interrupted by a knock at the door. A younger man entered, also in plain clothes but less senior by the way he held his body as he nodded apologetically at Rathbone, who sighed and stood, following his colleague outside. Lawrie checked his watch again. It would be dark out now. Would the evening papers have printed the story already? What if the police had given his name? Donovan would kill him if they mentioned that he worked for the Post Office. A journalist had already been snooping around outside the police station when Lawrie propped his bicycle up against the wall of the building, hoping that the location was enough insurance against it being nicked. The reporter had been too focused on firing questions at the constable to have really looked at Lawrie, but that had been hours ago now. Plenty of time for someone to let a name slip.

‘Looks like you can go.’ Rathbone reappeared, his face barely moving as he spoke. ‘But don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll be seeing you soon enough, I expect.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Lawrie stood and made for the door before the detective could change his mind. Whatever had gone on outside that interview room, it had not pleased Rathbone.

A uniformed constable showed him to the spot where his bicycle had been moved to, dumped on its side in the yard at the back of the police station. Even in the dim dusk light he could see the slashes in the tyres without having to bend down. A glance over his shoulder showed Rathbone and the younger detective watching him out of the lit window. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction.

He pulled his scarf up around his freezing ears and began to walk with his bicycle towards the main road, some sixth sense slowing him as he reached the corner, just in time to pull back. The journalist of earlier had multiplied into a huddled pack, puffing away on their cigarettes as they watched the front door of the police station. The bicycle wobbled beside Lawrie as he made a detour, discovering new streets that were both unknown to him and yet sadly familiar. Terraced houses with the occasional shocking rubble-filled gap. During the day these were children’s playgrounds, the bombed-out buildings becoming forts and castles. Dens full of hidden treasure. In the darkness they were macabre ghosts of London’s recent past.

Lawrie stopped off at a corner shop and bought a bottle of ginger beer. He’d be late for tea and Mrs Ryan would wonder what kept him. Evie too, when she arrived home from work before him. The thought of having to relive the whole experience again, seeing their faces fall in horror and pity, drained the energy from his legs.

He kept on going for the best part of an hour, but only three streets from home he wasn’t sure he could make it. There was an alleyway on his right and he managed to bump the bicycle along the broken cobbles, shouldering open a wooden gate that was only half on its hinges, given up since it no longer had a house to guard. What had once been someone’s backyard was overgrown with weeds and Lawrie slumped down into them, his back resting against the brick wall that still stood. A loose brick and a hard smack removed the bottle top, a helpful trick that Aston had taught him. The ginger beer burned his throat but it was a comforting fire, warm and familiar, and the sugar punched him in the face, waking him from his daze. He belched and wiped his mouth.

The skeleton of the house clung upright to the air, glass and debris littering the ground around him. The outhouse had survived almost intact, though its wooden door had decayed. Lawrie could see the porcelain bowl, the half-light of the distant moon glancing off its curves. This was a city marked by death, the darkness finally catching up with him. Everywhere you walked in London you could see tragedy through absence: construction sites that had sprung up to replace the missing homes, the widows who looked older than their years, that missing generation of men that had forced a desperate government to send their mayday overseas. Lawrie was only in the country because of the misfortune of others. He’d thought he was coming to help, same as Bennie had. ‘Doing his bit,’ as they said here.

The English just got on with life as if this was normal. Stiff upper lip, put on a brave face and pretend that if you can ignore the horrors of the past and think only of the future, then you too will be all right. This was an island of crazy people.

His mother had encouraged him to leave home but his brother had not warned him. Bennie Matthews had sent weekly letters home from his RAF base, addressed to their mother but always with a coded postscript for his younger brother. Never had he hinted as to what a dour country England was. Those postcards – what a dupe! Buckingham Palace in its pomp and splendour, the brilliant white dome of St Paul’s, the famous Tower Bridge sitting regal beneath bright blue skies that could have been painted on. Bennie was a real-life hero, posting his tales of derringdo, camaraderie and local dances before flying back across the Channel to save the Motherland. He’d never said a bad word about the country he’d died trying to save.

Lawrie tipped the last few drops of liquid onto his tongue, laid his head in his hands, and sobbed until his ribs ached. The sky was clouded over in a reddish-brown smog, not a star in sight to wish upon, but he closed his eyes and prayed. He wanted to go home. That was it, a simple statement that he’d denied for so long because home, as he had known it, no longer existed.

He regained control and wiped his face, dampening the corner of his handkerchief with spit just as his mother had done when he was a little boy, hoping that evidence of his weakness would not be apparent to anyone when he got home. It was late, and he made his way carefully, keeping to the warren of alleyways before going in through the back gate of Mrs Ryan’s house.

‘Where on earth have you been, love?’ His landlady called from the kitchen, opening the back door for him. ‘I left a plate in the oven for you if you want it? You must be starving. Spam fritters and spuds.’

‘Long story.’ He propped the useless bicycle up against the wall and left his boots outside by the door. He rested his forehead on the cold bricks of the outside wall until he felt composed, then went in.

The meal was coming to an end, Arthur and Derek sitting there with plates that were empty but for the grease stains. Arthur was caught up in the full flow of conversation and Lawrie was grateful to slink past them all without attracting any attention. He hung his coat up in the hall and took his time about returning to the warm kitchen.

‘I tell you quite honestly, Mrs Ryan,’ Arthur was saying as he entered, ‘I ain’t never been so insulted. Not in all my life.’

Arthur shook his head vigorously to emphasise his point. Usually Lawrie would be fighting back a smile, since Arthur took offence to something or someone at least once a week; twice last Tuesday alone. God only knew why the man had bothered to leave Trinidad when he seemed so miserable in London. Lack of funds seemed to be the only reason he was still here. In his forties, Arthur never spoke about his long dead wife, and Lawrie only knew of her existence through Mrs Ryan: landlady, matriarch and confidante – as long as you didn’t mind your secrets being shared within the boundary of her four walls.