Питер Ловси - On the Edge

Antonia called out breezily that the body was ready to move.

Rose felt the gooseflesh rise again. Resolved to master her nerves, she reached for the wine bottle, poured herself some more and swallowed it at a gulp. ‘Coming.’

She joined Antonia in the drawing room. This time she didn’t flinch at the sight of the body. She did what Antonia had urged, faced up to reality and forced herself to take in the scene as if it were a waxwork tableau. More colour remained in Hector’s features than she would have expected. Perhaps the chloroform had roughened his cheeks. Antonia had already removed some money from the pockets and placed it on a table nearby, together with a wallet, a handkerchief and a set of keys. No one could possibly identify Hector now, she claimed confidently.

‘Ready, then?’ Rose said. They were acting on her initiative now. She was taking charge.

Antonia nodded. It was almost as if she welcomed the secondary role.

They bent over the body and took a grip. The muscles were noticeably less rigid now. There was some movement at the knees and hips.

Antonia took most of the weight, slotting her hands under the armpits. They stumbled to the door and across the hall, pausing outside the kitchen. In two more stages they lifted him out to the garage. The torso was difficult to get into the car boot, so Rose lifted the legs in first and then supported the small of the back as they heaved him inside.

She shut down the lid and leaned on it.

‘How’s the time?’

‘It must be after midnight. Rose, how long will it take to get there?’

‘Getting on for three-quarters of an hour. And then we’ve got to scout around for a place to leave him.’

‘Let’s fetch our coats, then.’

At the door on the way out, Antonia gave a girlish shriek of laughter. ‘What on earth are you bringing your handbag for?’

‘It’s got everything in it. My ration book. My identity card.’

‘Rosie, you’ll be the death of me. We’re not going shopping and we don’t want to be identified. Leave it behind. All we need is the key of the car.’

‘I forgot.’ Rose turned and threw the bag on to the kitchen table, annoyed at her own stupidity. To reassert herself she announced that she would do the driving. Antonia didn’t object.

Great Portland Street was almost deserted. Only when they approached the Oxford Circus end did they start seeing people in evening clothes standing far out in the road to try and hail one of the few taxis operating at that hour. Some waved at anything on four wheels and shouted their fury at being ignored. A fine drizzle was adding to their discomfort.

Rose switched on the wipers and glanced at the petrol gauge. They had ample. The Bentley fairly purred compared with the RAF staff cars she was used to handling. She took the route through Piccadilly Circus and the Haymarket towards Charing Cross, then followed the river as far as Vauxhall Bridge. At the lights she said she wouldn’t mind a cigarette.

Antonia didn’t respond.

‘I said have you got a fag?’

‘What, darling?’

‘A cigarette. My handbag is back at the house. Remember?’

Antonia found a packet of her wicked-smelling Abdullahs in the glove compartment.

‘Thanks. You were miles away.’

‘Mm.’

‘Thinking about America?’

‘What?’

‘America. Princeton, isn’t it?’

Antonia tensed beside her. The voice shed its mateyness. ‘How do you know about that?’

The lights changed. Rose eased from second into third and they started to cross the bridge. ‘Hector told me. Wasn’t I supposed to know?’

Antonia started justifying herself rapidly. ‘It doesn’t matter a damn. I can’t go now. I can’t get married again, not while Hec is officially missing. It takes years and years before the law will admit that a missing person is dead. I can’t marry again, and Vic won’t even talk about living together. I thought this country was the last word in prudishness, but it seems they’re just as narrow-minded in New Jersey.’

Rose drove on without comment.

Antonia only pressed her case more vigorously. ‘Didn’t I tell you about this? Believe me, there wasn’t any question of trying to keep it from you. I mean, why should I, darling? I introduced you to Vic. God, after what you and I have been through together, we don’t need to hide anything from each other.’

Rose had stopped listening. Something bloody underhanded was going on. She’d touched a raw nerve when she mentioned America. Antonia’s pacifying gush was more of a threat than outright hostility. All this reassurance couldn’t paper over the fact that Vic and his job in Princeton were still paramount in Antonia’s plans. It was screamingly obvious that she hadn’t given up the idea. She was resolved to go to America with him. How could she, without marrying him?

Stockwell came up, then Brixton. They swung into the Brixton Road. Not much was moving in either direction. It was tempting to take the Bentley up to higher speeds along the wide highway, but she dared not risk it. This was the time of night when police cars lay in wait in side roads.

Heavier rain than they had been through had saturated the road. Each streetlamp stood over its own reflection and each oncoming car appeared to have four headlamps. The wet tyres rustled and clicked. Don’t let it lull you into quiescence, Rose told herself. This is the most dangerous hour of your life.

The first sign for Croydon came up.

Antonia rubbed at the window with her hand. ‘Journey’s end, my flower.’

Rose drove on. Most of the bombing had been further in, and she had a particular site in mind. A street close to West Croydon Station had been devastated by one of the giant V2 rockets in 1944. The entire area had since been evacuated and fenced round with corrugated iron, but children had ripped down a section of the fence to make their own cycle speedway track where there had been private gardens. Shells of houses stood about waiting for demolition, long since looted of anything worth owning. Clumps of willowherb and yellow ragwort had sprouted where pavements had been.

The turn came up on the left. For a short stretch they drove on the regular road past houses where people slept. The street lighting was sparse. Then the Bentley’s headlamps picked out the gap she had remembered in the fence at the far end. There was space enough for the car to pass through, out of sight of the houses. It swayed and rocked across a pitted surface on to the remains of a road until they were forced to stop where a wall had collapsed.

Antonia flung open the door and got out. ‘Wonderful, darling!’ She stood in the rain with her arms folded, relishing the scene as if it were Epsom Downs on Derby Day. ‘Let’s go prospecting, shall we? There’s a torch on the back seat.’

Rose couldn’t understand this boisterousness. Nerves affected people in unexpected ways, but was this a case of nerves? Was the Benzedrine responsible? She switched off the headlamps and shone the torch across the site. Two years’ growth of weeds had covered the rubble and made the footing awkward. Antonia was already striding indomitably towards the nearest ruined houses, which were — or had been — semi-detached, the sort that aspiring middle-class people owned. Probably they had once been allotted numbers that the owners had replaced with names like Mon Repos . They stood roofless and derelict. Rose shone the torch upwards. Where bits of wall jutted out of the debris were traces of floral wallpaper.

The first two houses were impenetrable. Presumably to keep children out, boards had been hammered across the doorways and window spaces and crisscrossed with taut barbed wire. They picked their way around them with the torch until even Antonia’s optimism faltered.