The Best of Science Fiction 12

"I want a lady's coat, hat and shoes. Are these enough?"

Arthur was small and shrewd. He only had one arm. He put the coupons under his scanner. "They're not fakes." I said impatiently, "Are they enough?"

"Just about, mate — as it's you," he said. He was a thin-faced cockney from the City. His kind had survived plagues, sweatshops and the depression. He'd survive this, too. I happened to know he'd been one of Mosely's fascists before the War — in fact he'd kicked a thin-skulled Jew in the head in Dalston in 1938, thus saving him from the gas-chambers in 1948. Funny how things work out.

But somehow since the virile lads of the Wehrmacht had marched in he seemed to have cooled off the old blood-brotherhood of the Aryans, so I never held it against him. Anyway, being about five foot two and weasely with it, he was no snip for the selective breeding camps.

"What size d'you want?" he asked.

"Oh, God. I don't know."

"The lady should have come herself." He looked suspicious.

"Coppers tore her clothes off," I said. That satisfied him. A cop passed across the station at a distance. Arthur's eyes flicked, then came back to me.

"Funny the way they left them in their helmets and so on," he said. "Seems wrong, dunnit?"

"They wanted you to think they were the same blokes who used to tell you the time and find old Rover for you when he got lost."

"Aren't they?" Arthur said sardonically. "You should have lived round where I lived mate. Still, this won't buy baby a new pair of boots. What's the lady look like?"

"About five nine or ten. Big feet:"

"Coo — no wonder the coppers fancied her," he jeered jealously. "You must feel all warm and safe with her. Thin or fat?"

"Come off it Arthur. Who's fat?"

"Girls who know cops."

"This one didn't until last night."

"Nothing dodgy is it?" His eyes started looking suspicious again. Trading licenses were hard to come by these days. I thought of telling him about Frenchy's full passport, but dismissed the idea. It would sound like a fantastic, dirty great lie. "She's OK. She just wants some clothes that's all."

"If she got her clothes torn off why don't she want a dress? That's more important to a lady than a hat — a lady what is a lady that is."

"Give me the coupons, Arthur." I stretched out my hand. "You're not the only clothes trader around. I came here to buy some gear, not tell you my love life."

"OK, Lowry. One coat, one hat, one pair of shoes, size 7 — and God help you if her feet's size 5." Arthur produced the things with a wonderful turn of speed. "And that'll be a quid on top."

I'd expected this. I handed him the pound. As I put the goods in a paper bag I said, "I took the number of that quid, mate. If the cops call on me about this deal I'll be able to tell them you're taking cash off the customers. They may not nick you, of course — but they may soak you hard."

He called me a bastard and added some more specific details, then said, "No hard feelings, Lowry. But I thought all along this was a dodgy deal."

"You mind your business chum, I'll mind mine," I said. "So long."

"So long," he said. I headed back towards the park.

Frenchy was asleep when I got back. She looked fragile, practically TB. I woke her up and handed her the gear. She put it on.

"Frenchy, love," I said sadly. "I've got to break it to you — you must have a wash. And comb your hair. And haven't you got a lipstick?"

She sulked but I fetched some water. By some accident Pevensey had missed what was left in the taps. She washed, combed her hair with my comb and we made up her lips with a Swan Vesta.

I stood back. Black coat, a bit short with a fur collar, white beret and black high heeled shoes.

"Honestly, French, you look like Marlene Dietrich," I said partly to give her the morale to carry off the FP-ing, partly because it was almost true. It was a pity she looked so undernourished, but perhaps they'd think it was natural. "Get yourself some makeup while you're at it."

"Here," she said in alarm, "I don't know what to do."

"You mean you've never used that passport," I said.

"You wouldn't if you were me," she replied. For her that was obviously the question you never asked, like "where were you in '45" or "what happened to cousin Fred." Her face was dark.

I passed it off. "You're cracked. Never mind. Just march into the place. Look confident. Tell them what you want. They'll cotton on immediately. You probably won't even need to show it to them. Scoop the stuff up and go. Don't forget they're scared of you."

"OK."

"Here's the list of what we want and where to get it."

"Yeah," she glanced over the list. "Brandy, eh?"

I grinned. "Christmas, after all. You never drink, though."

"No. It does something bad to me."

"Uh huh. Use a slight German accent. That'll convince them."

She left and I went and lay down. I felt tired after all that.

And, lo, another knock at my door, thinking it was Pevensey wanting me to get him some more quack medicine, I shouted "come in."

He stood in the doorway, a vision of loveliness in his black striped coat and pinstriped trousers. He glanced round fastidiously at my cracked lino, peeling wallpaper, the net curtain that was hanging down on one side of the small greasy window. Well, he had a right. He paid the rent, after all.

I didn't get up. "Hullo, mein Gottfried," I said.

"Hullo, old man," He came in. Sat down on my armchair like a man performing an emergency appendectomy with a rusty razor blade. He lit a Sobranie.

As an afterthought he flung the packet to me. I took one, lit it and shoved the packet under the mattress.

"I thought I'd look in," he said.

"How sweet of you. It must be two years now. Still, Christmas is the time for the family, isn't it?"

"Well, quite ... How are you?"

"Rubbing along, thanks, Godfrey. And you?"

"Not too bad."

The scene galled me. When we were young, before the war, we had been friends. Even if we hadn't been, brothers were still brothers. It wasn't that I minded hating my brother, that's common enough. It was that I didn't hate him the way brothers hate. I hated him coldly and sickly.

At that moment I would have liked to fall on him and throttle him, but only in the cold, satisfied way you rake down a flypaper studded with flies.

Besides I still couldn't see why he had come.

"How's the — playing?" he asked.

"Not bad, you know. I'm at the Merrie Englande these days."

"So I heard."

Hullo, I thought, I see glimmers of light. He saw I saw them — he was, after all, my brother.

"I wondered if you'd like some lunch," he said.

Normally I would have refused, but I knew he might stay and catch Frenchy coming back. So I pretended to hesitate. "All right, hungry enough for anything."

We went down the cracked steps and walked up Park Lane. The drizzle had stopped and a cold sun had come out and made the street look even more depressing. Boarded up hotels, looted shops, cracked façades, grass growing in the broken streets, bent lamp standards, the park itself a tangled forest of weeds. It was sordid.

"Thinking of cleaning up, ever, Godfrey?" I asked.

"Not my department," he said.

"Someone ought to."

"No man-power, you see," he said. I bet, I thought. Naturally they left it. One look was enough to break anyone's morale. If you were wondering how defeated and broken you were and looked at Park Lane, or Piccadilly, or Trafalgar Square, you'd soon know — completely.

Godfrey took me to a sandwich-and-soup place on the corner. A glance and the man behind the counter knew him for an FP holder. So the food wasn't bad, although Godfrey picked at it like a man used to something better.

Conversation stopped. The customers bent their shoulders over their plates of sandwiches and munched stolidly. Godfrey didn't seem to notice. He probably never had noticed. I had to face facts — although a member of my own family, Godfrey had always been a kraut psychologically. Always neat, always methodical, jumping his hurdles — exams, tests and assignments at work — like a trained horse. It wasn't that he didn't care about other people — I can't say I did — he just never knew there was anything to care about.