James Herbert - ‘48

It didn’t take long to unload this, my last haul of the day, and soon I was on my way back across London, leaving the grimy walls of Wembley Stadium behind, a place where once crowds had gathered to roar their excitement, but which was now just one huge and silent burial vault.

One day, when I was satisfied I’d done all I could, it would be their crematorium.

I’D CLEANED MYSELF UP and was sprawled half-naked on the bed, a glass of Scotch held on my bruised chest, cigarette in my other hand, when there was a knock on the door.

‘Hoke? It’s me, Muriel. Can I come in?’

I inhaled, exhaled, lifted my head and took another sip of the Scotch.

‘Hoke.’

She sounded impatient The doorhandle rattled.

With a groan, I rolled off the bed, placed the glass on the cabinet, and grabbed my pants. Cigarette drooping from the corner of my mouth, I unlocked the door and opened it a few inches. Smoke curled out into the corridor.

Muriel was wearing a different outfit, a cream blouse and loose, brown slacks, her hair drawn back on one side with a slide. She looked good – even grubby she’d looked good – but I didn’t let that affect me.

‘You’ve been gone most of the day again,’ she said, and there seemed little sense in replying to the obvious. After a pause: ‘Can I come in for a minute?’

Leaving the door open so that the option was hers, I picked up a shirt lying across the back of an easy chair and shrugged it on. I didn’t bother with the buttons, hoping her stay would be short; I sat on the edge of the bed, close to the Scotch. Muriel closed the door behind her and stood in front of me.

‘No point in asking where you went to, I suppose?’ Her neat, pencilled eyebrows were raised.

‘Had things to do,’ was my response.

‘Why so surly, Hoke? The other night…’ She left it there, waving a hand in exasperation.

What could I tell her? That guilt was busting my head, making me feel Sally’s presence all around me in that room? It was stupid; I knew it then, I know it now. Three years dead and I was still grieving for her, mourning for the life together we’d been denied. The whole fucking world gone to damnation and I was still focused on my own loss. And now I not only suffered the guilt of survival, but of betrayal also. It was morbid and it was irrational; but when I closed my eyes I still saw my young bride in this room with me, breathed in her perfume, heard her whispers. And I had closed my eyes.

I opened them quickly.

‘We…I…made a mistake,’ was all I could think of to say, and in truth, I wasn’t sure if I was addressing Muriel, or someone long since dead.

‘A mistake? My God, man, don’t you realize we’re living in a whole new world with a different morality? I wasn’t asking for love, just comfort, compassion. I was frightened, don’t you understand?’

Or staking a claim? I wondered, then hated myself for the cynicism. I dragged on the cigarette, confused, maybe even disgusted with myself. Anger was burning me.

‘All right,’ she said in a resigned, kind of stiff-backed voice. She was tired of reasoning with me and I couldn’t blame her for that. ‘I only wanted to let you know that Cissie and I have arranged a dinner party for us all downstairs in the Pinafore Room.’

I stared up at her as if she were the wacky one here.

‘Hoke, we’ve got to put the past behind us. It’s unreasonable of you to carry on despising Wilhelm Stern just because he’s a German. Gracious, not only did he not personally start the war against us, but he actually played very little part in it. He was shot down and captured in 1940, for God’s sake!’ Her tone changed and she looked at me appealingly. ‘We’ve got to forgive and forget, don’t you see? How else can we build a new life for ourselves? Some order has to come out of all this and that can only be if we cast past grudges aside.’

She strode to the writing desk and leaned back against it, arms folded, eyes intense. ‘It’s time for those of us who are left to come to our senses, to introduce some kind of order to our lives. What else is there otherwise? Lawlessness? Chaos?’

Calmer now, I swung my legs up onto the bed and rested my back against the headboard so that I could watch her across the room. She was serious. The planet had gone to blazes and she was talking law and order. Resting my cigarette hand on my raised knee, I cocked my head at her.

‘You don’t see it’s all finished?’ I was genuinely surprised. ‘You don’t see that our so-called civilization has gone AWOL? Jesus Christ, Muriel, there’s nothing left for any of us.’

‘We’re alive, blast you, and there are many more like us, waiting to make a fresh start, waiting for the survivors to come together again, perhaps even hoping for a new leader. It can be better than before, we can avoid the same age-old mistakes.’

Maybe she was right. That’s what I thought as I smoked the cigarette, my gaze never leaving hers. Someone had to start things rolling again and probably – no doubt - it was already happening in other parts of the globe. So why not here, in what used to be one of the world’s greatest cities? I studied Muriel in a way I hadn’t before. She was a slight, almost fragile, kind of girl, but I could see the resolve in her, a steeliness that I guess came with her breeding. Lord knows, as a kid my head had been filled with literature depicting England’s upper classes as people of fine character and great purpose (although Ma had warned me it wasn’t all true), and at that moment I was beginning to glimpse those qualities in Muriel. I’d witnessed the good old British stiff-upper-lip style in plenty of the RAF types I’d flown with, so I shouldn’t have been surprised to see the same trait in a lord’s daughter. Okay, a romantic view of the English – at least, of their gentry – but I’d had plenty of evidence to back it up since coming to these shores, and looking at Muriel across the room, that intensity still in her eyes, her jawline delicate but determined, I suddenly thought she might just have the backbone to see it through. Another thing I realized, though, was that my kind of cynicism could play no part in her vision of a bright new future. But that didn’t mean I’d discourage her. Truth was, I didn’t care one way or the other.

‘Will you join us this evening, Hoke?’ Her tone softened, her arms had unfolded. ‘Stern and Potter cleared some of the rooms downstairs and even raided the hotel’s foodstores. We’ve set up a makeshift kitchen in the private dining room next door to the Pinafore, and Wilhelm even went out and found us two portable oil cookers bigger and a touch more sophisticated than the ones you’ve been using.’

‘He left the Savoy?’ I didn’t like the idea.

‘We’ve all been out today. What did you expect us to do – remain cooped up all day in this place waiting for your return? For myself, I travelled across town to Daddy’s Kensington apartment.’

‘By yourself? Christ, woman, why?’

‘Are you really that dense, Hoke? I wanted to visit our old home, is that so unreasonable? After all, it was why we returned to London. I have certain things of sentimental value there, photographs, diaries and, yes, even jewellery. Things I want to keep to remind me of better times. And clothes, my own clothes. Yes, I know I could choose from any fashionable Knightsbridge shop, but I wanted certain items I already possessed, is that so difficult to understand? Cissie would have done exactly the same if she’d still had a home to go to. Instead she stayed behind and helped get everything ready.’

‘But-’ I started again, then let it go. ‘Okay. How did you get there?’

For the first time since she’d entered the suite she smiled. ‘I was going to use any motorcar I could find still working. Instead I found a bicycle that wasn’t rusted completely – it was inside a shop – so I used that. It squeaked a lot and the tyres need pumping up, but it got me through all the parked traffic in the streets.’