Sons and Daughters Read online

  Boots had told Polly of the incident at the Belsize Park factory, and Polly now brought the subject up again.

  ‘Boots, about this Ben Ford, the Fat Man,’ she said. Her slim body was curled up in a deep and wide armchair of velvety maroon, her knees peeping below the hem of her navy blue skirt, slender legs sheathed in dark blue fully fashioned stockings. Nylons. Supplied by Sammy to many of his female relatives by way of a furtive geezer he happened to know. A spiv, of course.

  ‘What about the gent?’ asked Boots.

  ‘I don’t think you ever mentioned him before now,’ said Polly.

  ‘Before was a long time ago,’ said Boots, ‘back in the Twenties.’

  ‘Well, you dear old thing,’ said Polly, ‘I like to know everything about your life.’

  ‘The Fat Man came suddenly into my life as a pain in the neck,’ said Boots, ‘and disappeared just as suddenly. He gave Sammy some unwanted trouble.’

  ‘What made him disappear?’ asked Polly.

  ‘Rough-house action on the part of some of my old Great War comrades,’ said Boots.

  ‘They beat him up American-style?’ said Polly.

  ‘They knocked the stuffing out of his bruisers a couple of times,’ said Boots.

  ‘And today, Mr Greenberg’s stepsons did a similar job?’ said Polly.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Boots.

  ‘Isn’t it time the Fat Man himself took a hiding?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Boots.

  ‘You old darling,’ said Polly. ‘Whatever worries Sammy and Tommy might be suffering about what will happen next, you’re not worrying at all.’

  ‘Sammy and Tommy won’t be worrying,’ said Boots. ‘Tommy can take a knock or two without running for cover, and Sammy can take several knocks as long as they don’t add ruinously to the overheads. Incidentally, do you know your legs are still as good-looking as they were in your days as a flapper?’

  ‘Yes, I do know,’ said Polly, ‘but it’s more important to me that you know too. Is Sammy now going to be able to let Susie and me have nylon stockings on demand instead of a pair here and there from his spiv sources? You’d say my legs deserve to know there’s a regular supply available, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ said Boots.

  ‘Well, then?’

  ‘Sammy will meet the requirements of all the family’s female legs, and at a discount,’ smiled Boots.

  ‘Oh, jolly good show,’ said Polly. ‘Sammy does have his priorities in the right order. And I accept your exciting compliments about my legs.’

  ‘Is a compliment exciting?’ asked Boots.

  ‘From you, it’s uplifting,’ said Polly.

  ‘You’re very welcome,’ said Boots.

  ‘Oh, those gorgeous flapper dresses,’ sighed Polly. ‘Silk stockings and sexy garters, sometimes with little bells on them so that we chimed when dancing the Charleston. Mad days. And sad days too, because of out-of-work old soldiers. And lovely days too, because of meeting you.’

  ‘Stop the conversation and switch the news on,’ said Boots.

  Polly smiled.

  ‘Love you, dear old thing, you do know that, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘You can accept it’s mutual,’ said Boots, getting up and switching the television set on himself.

  ‘What an old-fashioned pair we are,’ said Polly.

  The image of the newscaster appeared at that point, and they settled down to absorb the news, much of which was devoted to the Labour government’s continuing efforts to boost the economy, which Boots, along with Mr Finch, suspected would amount to very little, mainly because of its high taxation policies. Government spending was never as stimulating as consumer spending. Its main effect was to increase the Civil Service empires.

  Later, when they were about to retire, Polly said she’d been thinking that it was time Boots and his brothers, and some of the family’s young people, stopped calling his mother Chinese Lady. It was disgraceful, and not on.

  ‘Polly old girl,’ said Boots, ‘in her struggling days she made regular use of Walworth’s Chinese laundry, and came to respect the proprietor, Mr Wong Fu, and all his Chinese helpers. So we began to call her Chinese Lady. She thought it a great compliment, and still does.’

  ‘That story’s got white whiskers on it,’ said Polly. ‘It won’t do, and I’m not sure I’ve ever believed it.’

  ‘Well, we’re all stuck with it now,’ said Boots.

  ‘I’m going to work on you and all the others until you’re unstuck,’ said Polly. ‘Chinese Lady my eye, it’s a fantasy.’

  ‘Is this something to do with her future elevation to Lady Finch?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Shame on you for even thinking I’d ever be influenced by something like that,’ said Polly.

  ‘My mistake,’ said Boots, but his smile crept into his eyes, and Polly wondered, not for the first time, how it managed to reach his almost blind left one.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘how do you know the Fat Man will attack the factory and not the Camberwell offices?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Boots.

  ‘Well, you’re probably right that it’ll be the factory,’ said Polly, ‘especially as the nylon bales are stored there. I suppose he’ll either try to purloin them or ruin them. Now, let’s go up, shall we, and you can have a thrilling inspection of my fully fashioneds.’ That was what nylon stockings were called.

  Boots laughed.

  ‘Polly, you’re always an entertainment,’ he said.

  ‘Delighted you think so,’ said Polly, and they turned out the lights and went up.

  Boots had another dream that night, not of Belsen, but of Elsie Chivers and Emily, both gone and both of whom he had loved. They were out shopping together, and he, desperate to make contact, was trying to catch them up. They turned, saw him, laughed and ran. He chased after them, but while they were quick and agile, he was leaden-legged. Further, people got in his way. As in slow motion, he cannoned into a bulky figure. The Fat Man. He rebounded from the collision and slowly fell backwards. The Fat Man laughed at him. Emily and Elsie appeared, smiling and beckoning as he sank into a roaring black pit and woke up.

  Now what the devil, he thought, is the meaning of a dream like that?

  He might have searched for a reason at least, but he was asleep again in less than two minutes, relieved of the dream.

  Wednesday morning.

  Miss Lulu Saunders was typing out suggestions and notes made by Paul for next month’s propaganda leaflet.

  ‘Listen,’ she said.

  Paul was reading the morning’s mail, mostly letters of enquiry from potential recruits or of abuse from non-Labour voters. He looked up. There she was, with her curtains of black hair and her earnest spectacles. At least, they seemed earnest. And she was wearing a grey blouse and a long dark grey skirt. Pity she didn’t know attractive clothes had been invented. Or perhaps she wore what she did wear to discourage any advances. And perhaps she did so in order to concentrate single-mindedly on a political career. But it hadn’t discouraged the oversexed bloke from trying to defrock her.

  ‘Can I help?’ he asked.

  ‘Your handwriting’s lousy, d’you know that?’ she said.

  ‘I admit I scrawl down my thoughts and suggestions.’

  ‘Scrawl’s too flattering. It looks like a spider’s left its eight-feet tracks. Didn’t you attend school?’

  ‘Grammar school,’ said Paul.

  ‘Well, it looks as if you didn’t pay attention,’ said Lulu. ‘Ought to go back and ask for a handwriting refresher. You’re smiling.’ That was an accusation. ‘Nothing to smile about, you know.’

  ‘I’m smiling at your sauce,’ said Paul.

  ‘It’s honest frankness,’ said Lulu. ‘Look, come here and tell me what this word is.’

  ‘Bring it over,’ said Paul.

  ‘Don’t get me ratty,’ said Lulu. Paul humoured her. He crossed to her desk, and stood beside her chair while she pointed to some scribble.
‘What’s that word, for God’s sake?’ she demanded.

  Paul leaned and took a look, noting with automatic male interest that however drab her blouse was, it at least obviously housed the kind of development that the butler liked to see through Lady Lovelace’s bedroom keyhole.

  Concentrating on that which Lulu’s finger was touching, he translated his scrawl.

  ‘Practical measures,’ he said.

  ‘That’s two words. That’s joined-up writing gone pathetic. Still can’t decipher it. Looks like paralisationers.’

  ‘Bunkum,’ said Paul.

  ‘Bunkum? All that long scrawl is supposed to be bunkum? You just said—’

  ‘No, what you said is bunkum. There’s no such word as paralisationers.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Lulu. ‘But it’s what it looks like.’

  ‘I repeat, it’s practical measures.’

  ‘Oh, jolly good and hooray,’ said Lulu, and flipped a curtain of hair away from her glasses.

  ‘Tie it behind your neck with a ribbon,’ said Paul, going back to his desk.

  ‘What?’ said Lulu.

  ‘Your hair. Use a ribbon.’

  ‘Mother O’Grady,’ said Lulu, ‘which age are you living in? Hair ribbons went out with Hitler.’

  ‘Arm in arm?’ said Paul.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Arm in arm with Hitler into the fiery sunset of Berlin?’

  ‘God, you’re rubbish,’ said Lulu. ‘Listen, I make out here that you say practical measures should be taken to rebuild the Tower of London. Crazy.’

  ‘The East End of London,’ said Paul.

  ‘Anyone who makes East End read like tower is an illiterate,’ said Lulu. ‘Anyway, rebuilding’s already taking place in the East End.’

  ‘I side with the few Labour MPs who don’t like what’s going up, enormous blocks of flats.’

  ‘If you favour practical measures,’ said Lulu, ‘then blocks of flats are very practical. Don’t need acres of ground space.’

  ‘Wait till the people of the East End find themselves living twelve floors up,’ said Paul. ‘They won’t like it, they won’t have a street door and a decent doorstep.’

  ‘What do you know about street doors and decent doorsteps?’ asked Lulu.

  ‘My paternal grandma could tell you,’ said Paul. ‘She lived for years in a terraced house not all that far from here. To her, a doorstep is a place where you enjoy gossiping with neighbours.’

  ‘Sounds a nice old lady,’ said Lulu. ‘How’d she come to have a grandson with rubbishy handwriting?’

  ‘How would you like your bottom smacked?’ said Paul.

  ‘That’s it. Give me hysterics. What are you, a born-again Victorian reactionary?’

  ‘You’re supposed to be typing my notes,’ said Paul. ‘Get on with it, then prepare to type letters.’

  ‘From your handwriting?’

  ‘It’ll be clearer.’

  ‘Better be, I tell you,’ said Lulu.

  ‘You can make the morning coffee in five minutes,’ said Paul.

  ‘Oh, I’ll iron your shirts as well, won’t I?’ said Lulu.

  Paul grinned. What a character. He thought of Aunt Lizzie, Aunt Vi, Aunt Polly, of cousins Emma, Annabelle, Rosie, Bess and Patsy, the American one by marriage. Lulu Saunders wasn’t a bit like any of them. What was she like? Well, as his Uncle Sammy would have said, she wasn’t a female woman. Uncle Sammy meant feminine, of course. Lulu was a Lulu all right.

  But she made the coffee, although she did insist they took turns at the chore.

  ‘As the boss, I’m not sure I should say yes,’ said Paul.

  ‘The boss?’ Lulu gave him a pitying look. ‘You’re out of your tiny mind. We take turns. Right?’

  ‘I’ve got a problem,’ said Paul.

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘You,’ said Paul.

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Lulu.

  In sunny Cornwall the City stockbroker’s daughter, clad in brief white shorts and an RAF shirt, was crossing from the little sailing resort of Rock to Padstow by the ferry. With her were several friends.

  ‘That shirt, where’d you get it?’ asked one of the girls.

  ‘Where?’ The shirt was tied by its tails, and had its top buttons undone, revealing some very nice cleavage. ‘In a shop.’

  ‘Which shop? I’d like that swanky kind of shirt myself.’

  ‘Sorry, Fiona, not telling. The shop’s exclusive to me, and so are the shirts.’

  ‘Spoilsport.’

  ‘That’s life. Eureka, here we go.’ The ferry was docking by the harbour wall of Padstow, the young people on their feet.

  The quaint fishing port of Padstow received the sightseers with balmy indulgence.

  Chapter Twelve

  Thursday.

  Large Lump, having been informed by the Fat Man that something still had to be done to Sammy Adams, made a suggestion out of the top of his head.

  ‘We could do a clever job on his new Walworth store.’

  ‘Clever?’ wheezed the Fat Man, obese bulk squashed into the necessarily strong ramifications of his padded office chair. ‘Clever?’

  ‘Yus, guv, clever being doing it quick, like,’ said Large Lump, practically standing to attention on account of the Fat Man’s evil dislike of sloppiness. ‘The four of us could smash up every window in the place and pee all over the stock in no more’n five minutes.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Having had a few pints first in the local boozer,’ said Large Lump.

  ‘Shut up,’ growled Fat Man.

  ‘Right, guv.’

  ‘Clever my bleedin’ elbow,’ said Fat Man. ‘There’s flatfeet on the beat all over Walworth, like shiploads of sailors searching night and day for who swiped their rum. You think they’re going to look on and sing, “Clap hands, there’s old Charlie”, do you? They’ll cop you as soon as you throw the first brick. So listen.’

  ‘All ears, guv.’

  ‘I can bloody well see that, can’t I?’ said Fat Man. ‘Get ’em trimmed. Now, I know the Adams family. Thick as Ali Baba’s forty thieves.’

  ‘Who’s he, guv?’

  ‘One of Sammy Adams’s ancestors.’

  ‘That a fact, guv?’

  ‘Shut up and listen,’ said Fat Man, whose every word was squeezed out on account of his neck blubber. ‘The Adams family. The men are all ponces, the females all do what they’re told, and they all love each other.’

  ‘Strike a ruddy light, ain’t that incestry, guv?’ said Large Lump.

  ‘Only at bedtime,’ said Fat Man.

  ‘I tell yer, I’m having a bad time believing that,’ said Large Lump.

  ‘I’m having a bleedin’ worse time knowing you do, you brainless tadpole,’ said Fat Man. ‘Now, what I also know comes from Poky Prodnose who did some work for me yesterday.’ Poky Prodnose was a shifty private investigator. ‘Sammy Adams has got a married niece, name of Rosie Chapman. She’s a favourite of his. I knew that. I’ve now been informed by Poky that she and her husband, and another niece of Sammy Adams, run a very profitable chicken and egg farm. I want it smashed up, torn to pieces and every chicken turned into a bit of ruined poultry. And you can scramble any eggs you find. Get the idea?’

  ‘Yus, guv, smash it all up, chop the chickens and jump on the eggs.’

  ‘The idea, you berk, is to hurt Mister Bleedin’ Sammy Adams through his poncy family,’ said Fat Man. ‘When that job’s done, I’ll get Poky to find out which of his other relatives Sammy Adams cries over at Christmas.’

  ‘Well, guv, all right, if that’s what you want,’ said Large Lump, ‘but might I be so bold as to mention it ain’t going to hurt his business?’

  ‘It’s going to hurt him and his bleedin’ loveydovey family,’ said Fat Man. ‘After which, I’ll think about his business. Now then, about this chicken farm and how to get there. Listen again.’

  ‘I’m still all ears, guv.’

  ‘Well, don’t wag ’em, or you’ll take off,’ said Fa
t Man.

  ‘Boots old love,’ said Polly that night, ‘with you and Sammy away in Cornwall for two weeks, are you sure Tommy can manage if trouble arrives?’

  ‘Trouble from the Fat Man, you mean?’ said Boots.

  ‘Yes, I do mean him,’ said Polly. ‘From all you’ve told me he’s a dyed-in-the-wool crook.’

  ‘He’ll make it a night job for certain,’ said Boots, ‘and Tommy, I hope, will be safely asleep at home. It’s Eli Greenberg’s stepsons who’ll do the managing. They’re already on night duty at the Belsize Park factory.’

  ‘You’re confident they can cope with a spot of midnight villainy?’ said Polly.

  ‘I’m confident that Eli Greenberg knows precisely what Michal and Jacob can cope with,’ said Boots.

  ‘Did you say that with your fingers crossed?’ asked Polly with a smile.

  ‘Did I?’ said Boots.

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yup,’ said Boots.

  ‘You old darling,’ said Polly.

  ‘What brought that on?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Your ability to look a possible crisis in the eye without biting your lip, scratching your ear or losing your head,’ said Polly.

  ‘What’s on the surface can be deceptive,’ said Boots.

  ‘Your surface is true,’ said Polly. For the umpteenth time she thought how relaxed he always was, and so content with life, dispensing goodwill to all and sundry, awkward or stupid people included. She knew it was his survival from the war of the trenches that had made him treasure life and framed his attitude of tolerance and understanding, although there were, of course, the certain moments when his hidden steel showed. That could excite her, the surfacing of the Viking. ‘Look here, old sport, are you certain the Fat Man won’t blow up the shop and offices, and not the factory?’

  ‘No, I’m not certain,’ said Boots, ‘so I’ve made arrangements.’

  ‘Well, tell,’ said Polly.

  ‘You know Mitch, our van driver, one of my corporals during the war against the Kaiser, and a sergeant in the Home Guard during the war against the Nazi lunatic,’ said Boots. ‘He and an old West Kent comrade are also on night duty. In the Camberwell shop.’