salamander.
‘See,’ he said, ‘I never touched it.’
Troy dropped the shell into an envelope and gave the handkerchief back.
‘Where?’ he said.
‘Next to top step,’ the Shrimp replied. ‘It was what made me go down. Be seein’ ya.’
And he walked off into the night. From somewhere the bullseye torch appeared once more and bobbed like Corker’s Adam’s apple. It seemed to Troy that it waved in mockery all the way up Stepney Green.
§ 12
A cold coming out. Hendon was dark and deserted. Troy had to bang loudly on the door before the night-watch roused himself from his jobsworth’s sleep of the just and gruffly consented to sign for the sack of bones. A cold getting back. Troy left his car at the Yard and cut a night-walk; a convoluted, nosy policeman’s route home that defied the flight of the crow and took him where his feet led rather than his mind decided. Coming up Lower Regent Street into Piccadilly Circus he was reminded that it was Friday night. There were queues for the Eros Newsreel Theatre and for the London Pavilion. A warm hum of inviting human noise came off the Criterion Restaurant, and the same sense of life and release oozed from the other end of the social scale through the blackedout windows of the Lyon’s Corner House. The doors of The Monico, next to Saqui and Lawrence, and home of the 1/6d afternoon tea, banged ceaselessly with the flow of people in and out. The Luftwaffe scarcely needed to see the lights of London, surely they could hear it? He refused the invitation and headed towards Coventry Street.
He had been back at work only two days and it seemed to him that the weekend ought to be logically still further off. It also occurred to him that if this was Friday then he was due in court the next Monday. Just when he should be getting his teeth into the Stepney case. At the top of Haymarket, passing the Gaumont cinema, next to the long-defunct, boarded-up offices of Air France, he thought he heard someone call his name and turned to look back, but could see nothing in the blackness, as people blundered about trying to avoid each other, or not trying to avoid each other – depending on the urgency and promise of a Friday night in wartime. War, along with the inevitable increase in crime, had brought a new darkness and a new sexual licence – a freedom from one care flung out in defiance of all the others. At its crudest, do it now for we may be dead tomorrow. Troy crossed Leicester Square to Wyndham’s Theatre, over into St Martin’s Lane via the alley at the back, and turned into the entrance of Goodwins Court – a gate so strait Sidney Greenstreet could not have passed – to the small housein which he had lived since leaving Stepney. A sign of the times – the prostitute who usually stood guard at the corner of the Court and St Martin’s Lane was walking off in the direction of Trafalgar Square, her arm hooked through the arm of a man in uniform, so indistinct that Troy could not tell if it was a Pole or a Canadian, an airman or a soldier. Her sashay, the swaggering buttock roll, was unmistakable, even in the blackout. Before the war any whore would have had ten times the discretion and ten times the need. Ruby felt and acted as though she was safe from reproach and restraint – she knew damn well Troy was a policeman, and when she wasn’t trying to flirt with him was offering to fix him up with a friend, as she liked ‘all her friends to be friends’, which, it seemed, was how she regarded Troy.
The evening meal was a vague prospect. Troy could cook and clean better than most men of his age. Bachelorhood was not a waiting time to wallow in the pleasurable filth of one’s own incompetence. The youngest of a family of four he had been accustomed from an early age to rely on his own resources and his own company – a much older brother being beyond his reach and twin sisters virtually a world unto themselves – and all Ethel Bonham had had to do was play upon the
‘See,’ he said, ‘I never touched it.’
Troy dropped the shell into an envelope and gave the handkerchief back.
‘Where?’ he said.
‘Next to top step,’ the Shrimp replied. ‘It was what made me go down. Be seein’ ya.’
And he walked off into the night. From somewhere the bullseye torch appeared once more and bobbed like Corker’s Adam’s apple. It seemed to Troy that it waved in mockery all the way up Stepney Green.
§ 12
A cold coming out. Hendon was dark and deserted. Troy had to bang loudly on the door before the night-watch roused himself from his jobsworth’s sleep of the just and gruffly consented to sign for the sack of bones. A cold getting back. Troy left his car at the Yard and cut a night-walk; a convoluted, nosy policeman’s route home that defied the flight of the crow and took him where his feet led rather than his mind decided. Coming up Lower Regent Street into Piccadilly Circus he was reminded that it was Friday night. There were queues for the Eros Newsreel Theatre and for the London Pavilion. A warm hum of inviting human noise came off the Criterion Restaurant, and the same sense of life and release oozed from the other end of the social scale through the blackedout windows of the Lyon’s Corner House. The doors of The Monico, next to Saqui and Lawrence, and home of the 1/6d afternoon tea, banged ceaselessly with the flow of people in and out. The Luftwaffe scarcely needed to see the lights of London, surely they could hear it? He refused the invitation and headed towards Coventry Street.
He had been back at work only two days and it seemed to him that the weekend ought to be logically still further off. It also occurred to him that if this was Friday then he was due in court the next Monday. Just when he should be getting his teeth into the Stepney case. At the top of Haymarket, passing the Gaumont cinema, next to the long-defunct, boarded-up offices of Air France, he thought he heard someone call his name and turned to look back, but could see nothing in the blackness, as people blundered about trying to avoid each other, or not trying to avoid each other – depending on the urgency and promise of a Friday night in wartime. War, along with the inevitable increase in crime, had brought a new darkness and a new sexual licence – a freedom from one care flung out in defiance of all the others. At its crudest, do it now for we may be dead tomorrow. Troy crossed Leicester Square to Wyndham’s Theatre, over into St Martin’s Lane via the alley at the back, and turned into the entrance of Goodwins Court – a gate so strait Sidney Greenstreet could not have passed – to the small housein which he had lived since leaving Stepney. A sign of the times – the prostitute who usually stood guard at the corner of the Court and St Martin’s Lane was walking off in the direction of Trafalgar Square, her arm hooked through the arm of a man in uniform, so indistinct that Troy could not tell if it was a Pole or a Canadian, an airman or a soldier. Her sashay, the swaggering buttock roll, was unmistakable, even in the blackout. Before the war any whore would have had ten times the discretion and ten times the need. Ruby felt and acted as though she was safe from reproach and restraint – she knew damn well Troy was a policeman, and when she wasn’t trying to flirt with him was offering to fix him up with a friend, as she liked ‘all her friends to be friends’, which, it seemed, was how she regarded Troy.
The evening meal was a vague prospect. Troy could cook and clean better than most men of his age. Bachelorhood was not a waiting time to wallow in the pleasurable filth of one’s own incompetence. The youngest of a family of four he had been accustomed from an early age to rely on his own resources and his own company – a much older brother being beyond his reach and twin sisters virtually a world unto themselves – and all Ethel Bonham had had to do was play upon the
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