Gordon Ferris - The Unquiet heart

The underworld grapevine never ceased to impress me. I looked at Fast Larry and wondered why he was telling me this. Loyalty to his regulars? Larry was only as loyal as the last bet. Ordered to by Gambatti? A strange instrument. Or just malicious? His eyes were flicking all round the room. He was one of life’s parasites. Always on the edge of a crowd looking in. Seen as a go-between, not a person in his own right. Breaking the news to me got him into my life stream, gave him existence. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t acknowledge it.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Larry. If you bump into your mate Pauli, tell him we had nothing to do with it.” I was conscious the others were listening now.

“Yeah, piss off Larry,” called out Stan, who felt he could lord it over at least one bloke who was in worse shape than him.

Fast Larry winced like he’d been struck. He turned and shuffled off. But he’d left behind a small cloud. I didn’t have to explain to anyone at the table who Gambatti was.

Nor did I have to explain to Eve. I found her the next night celebrating her scoop with her fellow hacks in the Coal Hole in the Strand. The pub was just far enough away from Fleet Street to avoid bumping into the editor, but close enough at a slow stumble to put the evening edition to bed. Eve saw me and pushed towards me. None of her flush-faced cronies seemed to miss her. Her face was rosy with drink and success. It was a big transformation in thirty-six hours.

She waved the front page of the Trumpet at me. “Read all about it! Fearless reporter scoops gang-bust!”

“I’ve seen it. A great story. Almost wish I’d been there.”

“It’s what we agreed, isn’t it?” Her voice dropped. She looked anxious, as though I was upset.

“I don’t need the publicity. Not with Gambatti out for blood.”

“He’s going to be my follow-up piece.”

“Are you daft?” I exclaimed. “Why get Gambatti even more upset than he already is? You can’t name names without proof.”

She drew me further away from the rabble at the bar. We were standing by a shelf running along the smoke-blackened wall. Her face was close enough for me to smell her scent. She pressed a hand to my lapel and fingered the cloth. We got a hoot from her friends at the bar. She ignored them.

“Danny, this is my biggest scoop in years. I need to milk it for all it’s worth.

I’m too public for Gambatti to do anything to me. He’d be the first suspect.”

“From what I’ve heard, that wouldn’t matter a toss. He’s a complete nutter. He had a waiter’s fingers chopped off for slopping soup in his lap. He made a fortune out of the war. While the good folk of London were cowering in bomb shelters he sent his lads out on looting sprees. Lost a few of his gang in the air raids, but he never worried about it. Plenty more deserters to chose from.

Cleaned out whole streets, they tell me. Even nicked the poor blighters’ blackout curtains. Flogged them back to the owners on Saturday at the market.

He’s an all-round villain.”

“That’s what makes him so newsworthy.” Her eyes shone provocatively. And something in them – maybe a recognition of what we’d just been through – told me that if I leant forward to kiss her she wouldn’t slap my face. Her smile grew and she shook her head.

“Not here. Meet me in an hour, Baker Street tube. Unless you’re too tired?” I wasn’t.

Nothing would make me too tired for a date with Eve Copeland. Which I guess this was. Forty-five minutes later I was pacing around outside Baker Street station checking each entrance in case we missed each other. I stamped out my third cigarette, turned and saw her. She was standing looking at me, her face quizzical, as though she was wondering why I was here. Or maybe why she was.

Then she seemed to remember she’d summoned me but couldn’t decide what she was going to do with me now. I wasn’t sure myself. She switched on the smile and walked towards me. She thrust her arm through mine, leaned up and pecked me on the cheek and led me off towards her flat in Marylebone.

We lay on our backs, gazing at the ceiling, hips and legs touching in luxurious intimacy. I’d lit two cigarettes and given her one. Bergman and Bogart in Casablanca. It was the best cigarette in the world. We’d been clumsy and urgent at first; she seemed as deprived as me. Maybe she’d been telling the truth about boyfriends. Maybe the dragon who rented the room to her usually did a better job of blocking visitors. I hoped so. Eve made me take my shoes off to climb the creaky stairs. I felt like a burglar sidling up the edges of the steps in time with her. Halfway up she’d given me heart failure by shouting out, “Early night, for me, Mrs Gibson.” And got the reproving response above the sound of the wireless, “Just as well, Miss Copeland, after last night! I don’t know what sort of job that is for a young woman.”

We swallowed our giggles. Fortunately we didn’t need much verbal foreplay when we snuck into her room. We tossed our clothes on to her one chair and dived under the blankets. Her mouth was everything I’d anticipated: an erotic concoction of mint imperial, cigarette and alcohol. I couldn’t get enough of her full lips and tongue. Her mane of hair smothered me in smoky, shampooed coils. I nuzzled the soft angle of her neck and under her chin and wanted to leave teeth marks all over her skin.

I would have kissed and held her for hours. Nothing more. It was all I thought I needed. But her demands overwhelmed us. OK, mine too. Our only constraint was the bed; its old springs kept us in check, made me gentle, more careful. I wanted this to be the best for her. As it was for me.

Ages later when the house was asleep, she led me back down the stairs and pushed me reluctantly into the night with a final finger kiss to my sensitised lips. I slid my shoes on outside and walked off in a state of grace down the quiet streets of Marylebone.

Where there’s food or romance, the French have a phrase for it. In the case of love there is coup de foudre. I’d felt it the day she walked into my office, but ignored it. It was stronger after our first dinner. The warehouse raid had underpinned it. Now I was hunched over burnt toast and a cup of cold tea, worrying if we’d gone too far too fast. Wondering if she felt the same way or if it had just been that great charge, that release of tension after shared danger.

All that adrenalin swilling about. Like me and one of my more volatile girlfriends savaging each other after one of our shouting matches.

We weren’t seeing each other till the next day and I spent the next twenty-four hours oscillating between elation and panic. We met at the Lyons House in the Strand and when I saw her face my worst fears flooded through me. She was flushed and jumpy. I took it for embarrassment and regret.

“Danny, about the other night…”

“It’s all right. You don’t have to explain. It was daft. All that excitement…”

“We can’t do it again…”

“I know, I’m sorry. It was great but I understand…”

“Danny, will you shut up and let me finish!”

The girl bringing our tea gave us a look and left us in resounding silence.

She started again. “Danny, we can’t meet again like that. Not at my place. My landlady must have heard something. She gave me such a hard time yesterday. Came into my room unannounced last night. Sniffing the air like a blooming bloodhound.”

I burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny, you know! Rooms are hard to come by.”

“My place is no palace. You’ve seen it. But it’s snug.”

Her neck flushed again. “We need to go slow. We’ve got work to do. It’ll just get in the way.”

“What will?”