This Lovely City. Louise Hare

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ insurance against it being nicked. The reporter had been too focused on firing questions at the constable to have really looked at Lawrie, but that had been hours ago now. Plenty of time for someone to let a name slip.

      ‘Looks like you can go.’ Rathbone reappeared, his face barely moving as he spoke. ‘But don’t think this is the end of it. I’ll be seeing you soon enough, I expect.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’ Lawrie stood and made for the door before the detective could change his mind. Whatever had gone on outside that interview room, it had not pleased Rathbone.

      A uniformed constable showed him to the spot where his bicycle had been moved to, dumped on its side in the yard at the back of the police station. Even in the dim dusk light he could see the slashes in the tyres without having to bend down. A glance over his shoulder showed Rathbone and the younger detective watching him out of the lit window. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of a reaction.

      He pulled his scarf up around his freezing ears and began to walk with his bicycle towards the main road, some sixth sense slowing him as he reached the corner, just in time to pull back. The journalist of earlier had multiplied into a huddled pack, puffing away on their cigarettes as they watched the front door of the police station. The bicycle wobbled beside Lawrie as he made a detour, discovering new streets that were both unknown to him and yet sadly familiar. Terraced houses with the occasional shocking rubble-filled gap. During the day these were children’s playgrounds, the bombed-out buildings becoming forts and castles. Dens full of hidden treasure. In the darkness they were macabre ghosts of London’s recent past.

      Lawrie stopped off at a corner shop and bought a bottle of ginger beer. He’d be late for tea and Mrs Ryan would wonder what kept him. Evie too, when she arrived home from work before him. The thought of having to relive the whole experience again, seeing their faces fall in horror and pity, drained the energy from his legs.

      He kept on going for the best part of an hour, but only three streets from home he wasn’t sure he could make it. There was an alleyway on his right and he managed to bump the bicycle along the broken cobbles, shouldering open a wooden gate that was only half on its hinges, given up since it no longer had a house to guard. What had once been someone’s backyard was overgrown with weeds and Lawrie slumped down into them, his back resting against the brick wall that still stood. A loose brick and a hard smack removed the bottle top, a helpful trick that Aston had taught him. The ginger beer burned his throat but it was a comforting fire, warm and familiar, and the sugar punched him in the face, waking him from his daze. He belched and wiped his mouth.

      The skeleton of the house clung upright to the air, glass and debris littering the ground around him. The outhouse had survived almost intact, though its wooden door had decayed. Lawrie could see the porcelain bowl, the half-light of the distant moon glancing off its curves. This was a city marked by death, the darkness finally catching up with him. Everywhere you walked in London you could see tragedy through absence: construction sites that had sprung up to replace the missing homes, the widows who looked older than their years, that missing generation of men that had forced a desperate government to send their mayday overseas. Lawrie was only in the country because of the misfortune of others. He’d thought he was coming to help, same as Bennie had. ‘Doing his bit,’ as they said here.

      The English just got on with life as if this was normal. Stiff upper lip, put on a brave face and pretend that if you can ignore the horrors of the past and think only of the future, then you too will be all right. This was an island of crazy people.

      His mother had encouraged him to leave home but his brother had not warned him. Bennie Matthews had sent weekly letters home from his RAF base, addressed to their mother but always with a coded postscript for his younger brother. Never had he hinted as to what a dour country England was. Those postcards – what a dupe! Buckingham Palace in its pomp and splendour, the brilliant white dome of St Paul’s, the famous Tower Bridge sitting regal beneath bright blue skies that could have been painted on. Bennie was a real-life hero, posting his tales of derringdo, camaraderie and local dances before flying back across the Channel to save the Motherland. He’d never said a bad word about the country he’d died trying to save.

      Lawrie tipped the last few drops of liquid onto his tongue, laid his head in his hands, and sobbed until his ribs ached. The sky was clouded over in a reddish-brown smog, not a star in sight to wish upon, but he closed his eyes and prayed. He wanted to go home. That was it, a simple statement that he’d denied for so long because home, as he had known it, no longer existed.

      He regained control and wiped his face, dampening the corner of his handkerchief with spit just as his mother had done when he was a little boy, hoping that evidence of his weakness would not be apparent to anyone when he got home. It was late, and he made his way carefully, keeping to the warren of alleyways before going in through the back gate of Mrs Ryan’s house.

      ‘Where on earth have you been, love?’ His landlady called from the kitchen, opening the back door for him. ‘I left a plate in the oven for you if you want it? You must be starving. Spam fritters and spuds.’

      ‘Long story.’ He propped the useless bicycle up against the wall and left his boots outside by the door. He rested his forehead on the cold bricks of the outside wall until he felt composed, then went in.

      The meal was coming to an end, Arthur and Derek sitting there with plates that were empty but for the grease stains. Arthur was caught up in the full flow of conversation and Lawrie was grateful to slink past them all without attracting any attention. He hung his coat up in the hall and took his time about returning to the warm kitchen.

      ‘I tell you quite honestly, Mrs Ryan,’ Arthur was saying as he entered, ‘I ain’t never been so insulted. Not in all my life.’

      Arthur shook his head vigorously to emphasise his point. Usually Lawrie would be fighting back a smile, since Arthur took offence to something or someone at least once a week; twice last Tuesday alone. God only knew why the man had bothered to leave Trinidad when he seemed so miserable in London. Lack of funds seemed to be the only reason he was still here. In his forties, Arthur never spoke about his long dead wife, and Lawrie only knew of her existence through Mrs Ryan: landlady, matriarch and confidante – as long as you didn’t mind your secrets being shared within the boundary of her four walls.

      ‘So what did you say to him?’ Mrs Ryan asked, as she placed the teapot in the centre of the solid wood table that dominated her kitchen. She smiled at Lawrie, nodding to the cooker. ‘Sit down, love.’

      ‘What did I say?’ Arthur continued. ‘I say nothing. What else can I say? That man knows he can say whatever he likes to me. I say just one single word back to him, I’m out the door ’fore I can get my coat and hat on. He talks to me like I’m an imbecile ’cause he knows I just got to stand there and take it.’

      ‘What happen now?’ Lawrie asked Arthur, pouring himself some tea and cupping his hands around the mug.

      ‘My father would have beat me half to death, I even dared to think what this fella say to me.’ Arthur got into his stride. ‘I mean, is this what they teach children in this country? To give cheek to their elders ’stead of respect?’

      ‘Not in my day,’ Mrs Ryan agreed, placing a warm plate in front of Lawrie.

      ‘You should offer to kick the shit out of him,’ Derek advised, fitting a filter-less cigarette into his mouth. ‘I’ll give you a hand if you fancy teaching anyone a lesson.’

      ‘Derek!’ His mother nodded towards the large crucifix that watched over them from the wall opposite, brought over on the boat from Cork not quite twenty years before, though they all went to the local C of E these days.

СКАЧАТЬ