Gordon Ferris - The Unquiet heart

“Tommy, I think you’re right. There must be inside help. Tell me, is there any pattern to this? Do they come on particular nights or weekends or what?”

“They come when I gets a new load in, a good load, silk, or somethin’ they can flog for the most bleedin’ money, that’s when!” He lit another fag from the end of the current one.

“OK. When’s the next good load due?”

“Four days from now. Thursday morning the Clever Girl comes in from Holland.

She’s out of Constantinople through the Med. She drops half the load in the Hague and the other half here. Nice stuff. The best. The bastards will be queuing up to nick it!” He thumped the wooden gate so that it shuddered.

“Not this time, Tommy. Maybe not this time. If I can have a crack at it. Me and a few mates of mine will spend the night here.”

“I’ve tried that myself. Nothing. Not even a bleedin’ mouse.”

“Of course not. You’re not hard to spot, Tommy. They just wait for you to give up and then it’s back to business.”

He was nodding furiously and smoke was coming out of his mouth like the Royal Scot. “I knows, I knows. What you gonna do, then?”

“I don’t want you to tell anyone, not even your foreman. Not even your wife!”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Some of my mates were Special Services…”

Back at the office I phoned the landlord of the George and left a message for Midge, one of my part-time, as-and-when, don’t-tell-the-taxman employees who worked for beer money and had no problem spending it. They’d been stretched in the Forces and found it hard to settle down to a proper job. Like me. Midge would get word out to the others. I needed three, though I would have preferred twenty.

I thought for a long time about making the second call. The plan I had in mind was dangerous. No, not dangerous; risky. I know Midge and co would be up for it, but why should I complicate matters by bringing a bint in on the act? A reporter at that? They would curse me black and blue. I decided to start with some small fry and see how she reacted. I picked up the phone and asked the operator to connect me to the news desk of the Daily Trumpet.

“You’ll have to speak up, Danny!”

She sounded like she was at a Rangers match. “I want you to meet a friend of mine. Mama Mary.”

“A nun?”

“Not Mother, Mama Mary. A very different line of business.” And how.

“Where?”

“Soho.”

“So she runs a whorehouse?”

“She calls it her pleasure palace.”

“You’re selling me into slavery?”

“Mama Mary has her fingers on the pulse. If it’s illegal, she knows of it.”

“The Trumpet’s favourite kind of woman.”

We agreed a time and a date, and I hung up, but my smile lasted a while longer.

As I roused myself from sleep, I remembered I was seeing Eve today for the first of our jaunts. The notion raised mixed emotions: she was easy on the eye but hard on the brain; the sort of feisty girl that attracts men like moths to a candle, often with the same tragic ending. A woman who can provoke thoughts of murder or suicide. Sometimes both. As I lay there gathering my wits I ran a quick mental check to make sure she wasn’t part of an interesting dream. Nope.

I’d phoned her office twice since our first meeting – once more than I needed to – to confirm arrangements. She was real enough, unless she’d hired a secretary from the spirit world.

I was beginning to believe I was cured. I’d stopped imagining women now. No more ghosts to haunt my waking hours. Doc Thompson had given me the all clear provided I attended a monthly clinic with one of his pals in Harley Street. It saved a long train ride to Wiltshire, but it cost two guineas a go. An arrangement which seemed all wrong: it was paid for by the Army Department, but I still felt like the Doc and his ilk should be paying me for providing grist to their psychiatric mill. I was seeing Professor Haggarty at nine this morning and Eve this afternoon. I would have cancelled the mad Prof, but he was an enthusiastic Irishman who had trouble hearing the word no.

I’m in a rut with my morning rituals. I sat on the edge of the bed and lit a fag and waited for the kick to get me going. It came in a brief buzz of nausea, followed by the first cough, then the head cleared. I picked up my latest Penguin from the floor by my bed and placed it carefully on the end of a growing shelf of orange and green covers. In our house we’d never owned books; we just borrowed from the big Victorian library. But now, at a tanner a go, I can’t get enough of the smart wee paperbacks.

I tossed my pyjamas on the bed and wandered to the sink to light the gas flame under the immerser. While the water was warming I switched on the wireless and watched the light gather behind the dial and the sound of the Home Service break through. I like to listen to the seven o’clock news before switching to music.

I cleared the draining dishes and pot from my supper last night: mash, greens and two of the tiniest lamb chops I’d ever seen. Even the sheep were on rations.

I propped my little mirror against the draining board, put a new blade in the razor, and turned on the tap of the immerser. Then I rinsed my face with warm water, worked up some lather in my shave bowl and scraped my cheeks till they glowed. I lit the gas ring, filled the kettle and put it on. By the time I’d scrubbed myself with the flannel and dried the pool on the floor, the first cuppa was imminent.

Warmth seeped in through the skylight window from the late spring sun. Birds were belting out mating calls. May is a great time to be in London, even a London tattered from five years of pounding by Hermann. It was also a nice switch from this time last year. In ’45 I was hauled out of a Dakota at RAF Brize Norton on a stretcher and whisked off to have my head fixed. A year ago they were taking bone splinters out of my brain and screwing in a piece of aluminium. They joked about it coming from a cannibalised Spitfire, said I’d have my own built-in war memorial. As long as it wasn’t from a Messerschmitt.

I went back to the mirror and massaged a dab of Brylcreem into my hair, kneading the ridge under the skin. I combed the red tangle to careful order so that the scar was hidden, apart from the end that ran down into my left eyebrow. Maybe I should try a kiss-curl.

The newscaster was talking about the meeting of the new United Nations, and what a great step it was towards world peace. I hoped so. We said the same in 1918.

Then he switched to reports about the latest overcrowded boat sailing towards Palestine, with a thousand ragged Jews wailing their way to their promised land.

I couldn’t see why we were standing in their way, after what they’d been through. More stuff about new ration schemes; never enough of anything. Was this what we’d fought for? And was this why we voted old Winston out?

I switched over to the Light Programme, and as I dressed, I joined in the chorus with the Andrews Sisters: “He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of company B…” and crooned with Frankie, “I’ll never smile again, till I smile with you…”

Then the toast was burning and I was cursing and scraping it into the sink. I coated both slices in thick marge and blackcurrant jam but the taste of carbon still came through. Tea helped, and the second fag of the day had me whistling again. The milk was getting a bit whiffy but good enough for the stray moggy that had adopted me. I filled a saucer and left it on the landing. She must have been waiting; she pounced like I’d tossed her a fresh salmon. I left her lapping and guzzling, and plunged down the steps two at a time. For now I was late.

But it was my lucky morning; the big double-decker was grinding away from my stop as I belted across the road and leaped on the platform. A smooth change at Piccadilly Circus, a number 12 up Marylebone High Street and I was walking through Prof Haggarty’s door just as the clock on his receptionist’s mantelpiece struck the hour.