The last three weeks had been the longest and most anxious that Barbara had ever known. As the days passed and the letter she worried for didn’t arrive, she withdrew deeper and deeper into herself. She went to work, as usual, and did her best to be cheerful to her passengers; she took her share of the housework; and true to her vow, she was polite to her in-laws and answered her mother’s letters religiously. But her heart was a lead weight and there was little joy in her world.
After the first shock of the official notification had passed, Bob endured the long wait in his usual patient way but that was because he was afraid that a second letter would tell them the news they didn’t want to hear and he preferred to go on in ignorance for as long as he could. At least that left him with a little hope to cling to.
Heather had found a kind of hope too, but hers was superstitious and private. It would be his twenty-first birthday soon. If he was alive – and he had to be alive, she simply wouldn’t accept the possibility that he could be dead – then that would be the day he’d write to her. The letter would come that morning. ‘Dear Mum, Just to say I’m thinking of you …’ the way he’d written last year when he was on Salisbury plain. The belief kept her going. Even if he’d received that last awful letter of hers – and oh she did wish she hadn’t sent it – he would write to her on his birthday. He was bound to. But the hope was too flimsy to prevent her from being miserably jealous of any letter that was sent to Barbara.
‘Two more again this morning,’ she said to Bob, when the third pair arrived. ‘Nothing from the War Ministry and she gets letters from everywhere else, every damned day.’
‘Every other day,’ Bob corrected mildly, as he put on his cap.
‘Nothing from the War Ministry,’ Heather went on. ‘Every day that damned postwoman comes up that damned path an’ every day I think maybe this is it, maybe they’ve found him.’ Her eyes were glistening with tears in her fierce, taut face.
He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘I know.’
She was thinking of her Dear John letter again, and that made her too irritable to respond. ‘No you don’t. Nobody knows. Day after day. It’s not right. Why should she have letters and we don’t?’
‘They’re from her mother and her aunt,’ he said. ‘You don’t begrudge her that surely. A bit of comfort.’
But in fact, although Becky Bosworth wrote briefly and more or less to the point, Maudie Nelson’s letters were no comfort to Barbara at all. After the kindness of the first one, they’d degenerated into gossip – Jimmy had been ‘ever so bad with the croup’, Mrs Cromer’s bunions were worse, Vic Castlemain was ‘working for a jewler and doin ever so well’. Now they were simply a regular reminder of how far apart they’d grown. We got nothing in common no more, Barbara thought sadly. I hardly know what to say to her. She don’t even follow what’s going on in the war.
If it hadn’t been for Aunt Sis and the General Election, it would have been an impossible time. But Aunt Sis was a life-saver. There was plenty to do and she made sure that Barbara was involved in all of it, calling for her after work and leaving notes for her at the garage. Barely a day went by without a job being found. There were letters to write, leaflets to draw up, agendas to compose, and on the first Saturday in April there was a public meeting in Bellington South at which she had to make her first speech as parliamentary candidate.
Mr Craxton looked out a booklet on how to compose such a speech and walked to her flat to deliver it in person. It was his first outing since his heart attack and he still looked frail, so she thanked him for it very kindly and said she was sure it would be invaluable. But when she came to read the thing, it was worse than useless.
‘I can’t write a speech this way,’ she said to Barbara later that evening, and quoted, ‘Opening proposition. Development. Further development. Concluding paragraph. It’ud end up dull as ditch water. No one’ud listen to a word of it.’
Barbara’s mind was still sharp, anxious though she was. ‘What do you really want to talk about?’ she asked.
There was no doubt about the answer to that. ‘The welfare state. That’s what this election’s going to be about. The welfare state an’ the five giants we got to conquer.’
‘Well thass it, then,’ Barbara told her. ‘You’ve written the opening proposition already.’
It took them until two in the morning to write the speech and even then Sis wasn’t completely happy with it. But it had taken their minds off their worries and it turned out to be a huge success, unfinished or no. After the meeting she and Barbara and the Bellington South management committee went cheerfully off to the nearest pub trailing half the audience with them. The debate continued until closing time, and Barbara was in the thick of it and glad to be there.
It was only on the rare occasions when she was at home and on her own that her misery was too much for her. Sometimes she took out her precious shoebox and reread some of Steve’s letters, so that she could hear his voice again. But the comfort they brought was complicated by an underlying anguish, because so many of them led her straight to the situation she was in now.
… People don’t die in a war. They are killed and most of them are young and have their lives before them … I think the worst thing is there’s no time to mourn them. We just have to get up and go on … there isn’t any other option. So don’t let this stop you. Keep on going. Live your life to the full. It’s the best way to honour our dead …
And wasn’t that what she was doing? Keeping on. Working hard. Planning for the future. But how would she manage in the future if he didn’t come back to share it, if he’d been killed like the others, and she was never going to see him again? It would be his birthday in a week’s time. Oh Steve, she mourned, my own dear, darling, darling Steve, that’ll be your twenty-first birthday and I don’t know whether you’re alive or dead.
Meantime the papers were full of the great advances that were being made on all fronts. The tanks were ‘swanning’ across Germany. Hanover was captured. Vienna was liberated. The Russians were storming towards Berlin. There was even news of success against the Japanese, with American marines landing in a place called Okinawa. The rations were down again but they’d come to expect that. Cheese had been cut from three ounces a week to what Sis called a measly two. But the war was nearly over. They’d started work on the new electoral register. Better times were coming, even if success was tinged with sadness. As it so often was.
A piece of sad and rather unexpected news broke on April 12th. President Roosevelt, the stalwart of the American war effort, was dead.
‘Poor ol’ feller,’ Barbara’s passengers said. ‘To come all this way an’ work so hard, an’ then die just when it’s almost over. Don’t seem fair. ’Specially in all this lovely weather.’
And it was lovely weather, the hottest April on record. 76°F in the shade, so the papers said. A real heatwave. But there was still no letter from Steve and he’d come ‘all this way’ too. What if he’s dead like the President? What if they write to tell me that? Oh please God don’t let them write and tell me that.
‘His birthday tomorrow,’ Heather said to her reflection that evening. ‘Then we shall see.’
But although it was another beautiful day, no letters were delivered at all. That evening, when she finally had to face that there was no possible chance of any more mail that day, she sat down and cried for over an hour.
Barbara was out, at a committee meeting with Aunt Sis, but Bob was on late turn and caught the full impact of her grief.
‘Try not to cry so,’ he implored, patting her heaving shoulders. ‘You’ll make yourself ill.’
‘I don’t care!’ she said wildly. ‘He’s dead. I know he is. Didn’t I tell you right at the start? And I never got to say goodbye to him. Not so much as a word. It’s the same as our Betty. They said missing then. But they knew she was dead all along. They had to come an’ tell us in the end, didn’t they. He’s not missing any more than she was. I would be a fool to be caught out by the same line twice. He’s no more missing than I am. It’s always the same. They start by saying they’re only missing. Missing isn’t dead, they say. And we fall for it. It makes no odds what they say. They all end up dead in the end.’
He tried to reason with her. ‘We don’t know he’s dead.’
But she groaned. ‘We do! We do!’
He offered tea but she groaned at that too. ‘And here we are stuck with that awful girl. Why doesn’t she go home and leave us in peace?’ It wasn’t fair and she knew it but grief was making her too bitter to be fair and she needed someone to sting.
Bob didn’t know how to answer her. ‘Oh come on, Heather,’ he said. ‘She’s as worried as you are. She loves him. Anyone can see that. I mean, we’re all in the same boat. You, me, her, all of us.’
‘No we’re not. She got to say goodbye. I didn’t.’
‘We are,’ he said reasonably and tried to persuade her. ‘We’re his parents, she’s his wife. You can’t get closer than that.’
It was a wasted effort. His calm exasperated her. ‘Will you stop being so bloody reasonable,’ she cried, flouncing about the kitchen. ‘You’re driving me up the wall.’
He grew touchy the way he always did when she was too wild for him to understand. ‘I’m pointing out the truth,’ he said, standing stiffly beside the table.
She turned on him, her face blazing. ‘Truth!’ she said wildly. ‘Truth! What’s truth got to do with it? You don’t know anything about it. You didn’t write him that letter.’ Then she stopped and put her hand to her mouth, angry and miserable and afraid, knowing she’d gone too far.
For a split second she hoped he might not notice but he was instantly alert and alarmed, understanding that this was serious and that she regretted what she was telling him. ‘What letter?’ he asked.
‘Nothing. It’s not important.’
He took two strides towards her, caught her by the shoulders, insisted, ‘What letter?’
She was caught. She would have to tell him now. ‘I wrote to him,’ she said, her voice sullen with distress. ‘Just before he went missing. I told him she was carrying on.’
He was wearied with disappointment. ‘Oh Heather.’
‘Don’t oh Heather me,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘I told you not to.’
‘I know. Don’t go on about it.’
‘What a thing to do!’
‘Look,’ she said, her face imploring. ‘It’s not the way you think. I couldn’t help it. I thought …’
‘Maybe he didn’t get it,’ he hoped.
That plunged her into despair. ‘Oh he’ll have got it,’ she said bitterly. ‘Sod’s Law he’ll have got it. And now he’s dead and I can’t take it back or say sorry or explain or anything. And we’re stuck with that awful girl. Well now she can hook off and marry that fancy man of hers. I don’t care.’
‘She won’t do that.’
‘That’s what he said. Second string to her bow. In case.’
‘No,’ he contradicted. ‘She won’t. She ain’t that sort a’ girl.’ That much he was certain of.
‘You should talk to that Victor feller,’ she said bitterly.
‘You didn’t tell our Steve all this, did you?’
She was too distressed to remember what she’d told him. ‘I don’t know. I could have. I was upset.’
And that could have been the last letter he got from us, Bob thought. Poor kid. ‘I’m sick to death a’ this bloody war!’ he said.
Victor had been fully occupied for the last three weeks keeping the ‘Hatton Garden’ jeweller under observation. He and his two companions had done their work well, as the Skibbereen admitted, although grudgingly. They knew when the local bobby walked his beat and how long he stayed in the area and they’d found out virtually everything there was to know about the jeweller, who to their disappointment, didn’t operate in Hatton Garden at all but had a small lock-up premises in a dusty cul-de-sac quite a long way behind that prestigious road.
They knew his name – Ebenezer Jones – and where he lived – in a house in Clapham with his mother – what he had for dinner – sandwiches wrapped in plain white paper – what and where he drank – a double scotch at the end of the day in the Three Tuns. They knew the name of his dog, the colour of his shirts, the size of his shoes, the newspaper he read, even when he went to the toilet. More importantly, they’d discovered where he kept his keys and his safe, and knew exactly how to get in and out of the backyard behind his shop, and from there into the workroom where all the choicest pieces were kept. There was a toilet window that could be easily forced, because he left it ajar now that the weather was so warm.
During their long vigil, Victor had found out quite a lot about his companions too, that Mog had been turned down by the army because he was seriously undersized and that he was very touchy about it, that Tiffany was forty-two and an old lag, a professional burglar who’d met the Skibbereen in the Scrubs. He reckoned that was the turning point in his life. ‘Been with ’im ever since, except when we was doin’ a bit a’ bird. Never looked back, from that day to this.’
But for all their accumulating knowledge, they were no nearer to knowing when the diamonds were being delivered than they’d been at the outset. The April heatwave continued and Vic put on his best suit and visited the shop pretending to be a prospective buyer. ‘I’m looking for an engagement ring.’ But it was all the old stuff they’d seen in the window for the last two weeks and when he demurred that he couldn’t find anything he really liked, nothing else was forthcoming.
‘Maybe he’s changed his mind,’ Mog said, as he and Victor were drinking their customary evening beer in an obscure pub just round the corner. ‘I mean, we can’t keep this up fer ever. I ain’t seen a bit a’ skirt in weeks.’
‘Nor me!’ Victor said. Although in his case the long wait could be an advantage. Give old Spitfire time to get over the hollering. You always left a gal alone for a bit when you’d hollered at her. That was only sense. Meantime he had to admit he’d enjoyed himself pretending to be a customer. He thought he’d done it rather well, with just the right amount of superiority, which had been easy enough because he’d been anticipating the moment when he would slide one of those sparkling diamonds onto Spitfire’s finger and put everything right again. The job was taking a long time. But it would all be worth it in the end.
The end came with a suddenness that took them all by surprise. Vic and Tiffany were strolling into the culde-sac one warm afternoon when a taxi pulled up outside the shop and a foreigner got out, wearing a beige suit and a very French hat and speaking in wonderful broken English as he paid his fare.
He was in the shop for over an hour and when he finally emerged into the sunshine, he looked extremely pleased with himself and went briskly off towards Hatton Garden leaving a strong smell of French cigarettes behind him. The two observers waited until he was out of sight and then Tiffany sent Victor into the shop to try his luck again, while he shot off to ring the Skibbereen.
Mr Jones was delighted to see him. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘I do remember you. An engagement ring, wasn’t it? You’re in luck. I’ve just had a new consignment. Very fine rings. You won’t find better in all Hatton Garden, though I say so myself. I’m sure you’ll find something to suit today.’
It was a dazzling collection, three rows of very grand diamond rings, all of them shooting fire against the black velvet of their tray – tray 32 – and enough to make anyone yearn with greed. Vic was entranced by them. He didn’t have to act when he said there were at least three that would suit very well. And it was pure joy to make his final choice and to be told that he’d selected the finest diamond of the lot.
‘’Course, I can’t make a decision now,’ he said, when he’d made as many mental notes as he needed. ‘I mean, my fiancee must see it too, you understand. I’ll come back tomorrow and bring her with me.’
Mr Jones said it would be a pleasure to see them and smiled his customer out of the shop. And Victor stood on the doorstep and lit a cigarette, very slowly and thoughtfully, while he noted where tray 32 was being taken. Back into the workshop and a turn to the right, where the bench is. Couldn’t be better.
The Skibbereen was waiting in their chosen cafe. ‘That’s it then,’ he said, with great satisfaction. ‘Midnight. As planned. I’ll go out in the garden and see to my fence.’
But at midnight everything went wrong.
They got over the back wall easily enough although rather more noisily than Vic thought necessary. But then Mog protested that he didn’t think he could get through the toilet window.
‘I’ll never do it, Tiff,’ he whispered. ‘It’s too small. I shall get stuck.’
‘No you won’t,’ Tiffany told him, sternly. ‘We’ve measured it. That’s all took care of.’
‘Let Vic do it,’ Mog begged. ‘You’ll do it, won’tcher Vic.’
Victor scowled at him, his eyebrows pulled together into a straight dark line of annoyance. ‘You always do this to us,’ he hissed. ‘I won’t. Thass your job. Get you on with it.’
‘Push him in,’ Tiffany whispered.
Which they did, and presently he opened the back door and let them in. So far so good.
But there was nothing on the workbench at all. And no keys on the hook either.
‘That’s a bugger,’ Tiffany said. ‘He must’ve taken ’em home with him. We’ll have to blow it. We need some padding. I don’t suppose the old fool’s got any cushions.’
He hadn’t, so they had to take the curtains down and use them instead, which made Mog feel exposed. ‘Anyone could look in an’ see us,’ he complained to Victor.
Victor was nervous himself but he cloaked it with anger. ‘Don’t talk squit,’ he said crossly. ‘There’s no one out there.’
‘Stand back,’ Tiffany ordered. And the safe blew up.
The noise of the explosion in such a small space was shattering. Vic could feel his eardrums vibrating as if they were gongs and there was so much dust in the air that for a second he couldn’t see anything else. Then he became aware that there was somebody shouting in the street and that Tiffany was grabbing trays and boxes from the safe and throwing the rings into a velvet bag. And he put his own hands into the wreckage and tipped the rings from tray 32.
‘Scarpa!’ Tiffany said, throwing the trays to the ground and belting towards the door. The shouts were getting louder and now they could hear running feet.
So Mog and Vic ran too, out of the open back door, over the wall, along the alley, panicking that they’d be arrested at any moment. But the alley was empty, Tiffany had vanished, there was no sign of the coppers and all the noise seemed to be coming from the street. And presently they emerged into Farringdon Street and a train went chuffing past making such a racket that it gave them a chance to catch their breath and calm down.
‘Now what?’ Mog asked, as he leant against the wall, gasping and spluttering.
‘Home,’ Vic gulped. ‘I need a drink.’
‘You going back for the car then?’
‘No I hain’t!’
That worried Mog. ‘What if the cops pick it up?’
‘Let them,’ Vic said, heading for the nearest tram stop.
‘They’ll trace you.’
‘I’ll tell ’em it was stolen. Are you coming or not?’
‘What about the Skibbereen? You still got some a’ the rings ain’tcher?’
‘He’ll find us,’ Vic said. ‘He knows where we are. He won’t expect us to hang around here, now will he?’
So they caught the tram, which was a bit of a comedown after staging a successful jewel robbery but better than walking. They’d have been horribly conspicuous on foot in the City at that time of night. And after a complicated journey they came safely back to the Isle of Dogs and Phossie’s soot-dark house. It smelt sour and filthy, a combination of Phossie’s old socks, stale food, and the reek of that clogged lavvy. But there were two bottles of whisky in the sideboard, where Vic had left them before he set out that morning, so they settled down to drink and wait. And day-dream about how they would spend their cut.
‘I shall rent a decent house,’ Vic said. ‘Something with a bit of style.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ Mog said. ‘They’re all bomb damaged.’
‘Not further out. What’ll you do?’
‘Buy a Jag. I’m sick a’ driving other people’s. How much d’you reckon we’ll get?’.
‘There’s fifteen rings on a tray,’ Vic said, ‘that’s two hundred if it’s a penny. Say four trays, maybe five. Could be a grand. Which reminds me, I’d better get my lot wrapped up. They’re still rolling around in my pocket an’ he won’t think much of that. Shan’t be a tick. I’ll just go and find a box or something.’
And sort out the rings he intended to keep. He chose three, a half hoop, the biggest cluster and the solitaire he’d fancied in the shop. She could take her choice and he’d sell the others. Then, having hidden them away among his shirts, neatly tucked up in a clean sock halfway up a sleeve, he arranged the rest of his haul in the smallest box he could find and went back downstairs.
Mog was sprawled in his chair, shaking out the last drops from the first bottle as Vic put his box on the table. They’d only just filled their glasses, when they heard two cars drawing up outside. Mog got up, rather unsteadily and peered through the curtains. And there, looming towards the door, with Tiffany sloping behind him like a shadow, was the Skibbereen.
He filled the room, like a bull in a stall, massive and aggressive as if he was about to paw the dirty lino and snort down those wide nostrils, a barrel-chested, iron-fisted, threatening hulk. ‘You got a lot to learn, son,’ he said to Vic. ‘Never leave yer car. That’s a mug’s game. Tiff’s brought it back for yer. Swap it for another one first thing tomorrer. Where’s the ice?’
Mog quailed into his chair but Vic stood, ready to fight back. He caught the keys Tiffany tossed to him and pointed at the box. ‘Right here,’ he said. ‘All present an’ correct.’
‘Twelve,’ the Skibbereen counted as he opened the lid. He looked suspiciously at Vic. ‘Where’s the other three?’
‘That’s all there was,’ Vic said boldly, and when the Skibbereen glowered, ‘He must’ve sold some.’
‘Don’t mess me about,’ the Skibbereen said. ‘All the other trays was full.’
‘That’s right,’ Tiffany endorsed. ‘Fifteen apiece. We counted.’
‘Well that one wasn’t. Straight up.’ And he turned his pockets inside out to demonstrate his honesty.
The Skibbereen calculated, narrowing his eyes. Should he have Tiffany ransack the place or put on the threateners? If he had taken the other rings they’d be stashed well away by now. The boy was dishonest but he was no fool. And at that point Mog spoke up and made up his mind for him.
‘When d’we get our cut?’ he wanted to know.
‘That’, the Skibbereen said, ‘is entirely up to your friend here. I’ll think about it when I get all the loot. All of it mind! D’you wanna lift or are you walking back?’
Mog scrambled to his feet, gratefully obedient.
‘Get that car switched,’ the Skibbereen said to Vic. ‘You owe me rent for next month don’t forget. Tiff’ll collect on Friday. You know the score, don’tcher. If I was you, I’d do a bit of searching. Try yer conscience for a start. See if you can’t find what I want. If you want to stay healthy, that is. I ain’t a man to be doublecrossed. Makes me disagreeable. An’ when I’m disagreeable, I cut up rough. You wouldn’t want that.’ And with a last menacing scowl he was gone, trailing Mog and Tiffany behind him.
Left on his own in the dust of the empty room, with whisky sour on his tongue, and the stink of the house filling his nostrils, Vic realised that he was panting. Annoyance of course, not fear. No man alive could frighten him. But it was unpleasant just the same. He sat on the chaise longue, thinking as hard as the whisky would allow. If he didn’t come across with the rings, the Skibbereen would have the place torn apart. Mentioning Friday had been a threat as well as a date. They’d all understood that. So he’d have to get rid of them first thing tomorrow morning. And everything else that hadn’t come the Skibbereen’s way. That case of nylons for a start and quite a bit of the tinned food. I’ll have to move it all out, he thought. I can’t sell it, or someone’ll snitch. But where could he take it? There were plenty of empty houses in the street but if the Skibbereen owned them all, there’d be no point in trying to hide anything there. No, when it came down to it, there was only one place he could go to. It cheered him to see himself distributing largesse, putting things right, reinstating himself.
I’ll go there tomorrow, he thought, finishing his nightcap. Or I suppose I should say, later today. When I wake up.