This Lovely City. Louise Hare
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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