A Fleeting Meeting
A F LEETING M EETING
H ELLO , C HARLIE M ATTERS ,” SHE said.
He stared at her through the width of his shabby doorway.
Molly looked triumphantly back at him. She had on a light green dress with a white hat and beige coat. Her shoes were also beige. In one hand was a purse and in the other a very proper wicker picnic hamper with a lid.
“How’d you know where I live?” he said darkly.
“I had a nice chat with Mr. Oliver. He gave me your address.” She looked over his shoulder. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Don’t see why I should.”
“It would be rude if you didn’t. I’ve come all this way, haven’t I?”
“How’d you get here anyways?”
“I walked part of the way and then I took a cab. It’s a nice day.” She noted his disconsolate expression. “Is anything wrong?”
“No, why should there be?”
“You just look different. Are your parents home? Though it’s Saturday I suppose your father might be off to work?”
Charlie hesitated and then said, “He’s in the army, Miss.”
“Yes, of course, how very stupid of me. So does your mother work, then?”
He didn’t answer right away, his mind moving swiftly. He didn’t really know Molly. And what business was it of hers about his parents?
“Yeah, she does the cleanin’ at some buildin’s and such, like I told that bloke on the bus.”
“You mean at night?”
“Yeah. She’s asleep. Just got home a bit ago.”
Molly set down the basket, opened her small purse, and took out a bottle of ointment and a bandage. “Let me see your hand.”
“What?”
“The cut there.”
Charlie slowly held out his hand.
“Have you cleaned it like I told you to?”
“Um…”
“I thought so. Hold still.” She took a bottle of soapy water and a cloth from her purse, poured some onto the cloth, and thoroughly cleaned the cut and dried it. “Now some ointment and a bandage. Don’t worry, it won’t hurt.”
“I ain’t worried,” he muttered, thinking guiltily of dead Eddie with his smashed head.
She glanced at him as she applied the ointment and then tied the bandage around his hand, finishing with a sturdy knot. “There, that should do for now. You should have your mother change the dressing daily until the redness goes away and the wound begins to heal. You can take the ointment and I’ll leave you with several more bandages.”
She handed all this to Charlie, who put them away in his assorted pockets. “Thank you, Miss. So, did your dad pass us?”
“What?” she said, clearly startled by his query.
“Your dad? Was he home when you got back that night?”
“Um, no, actually. He worked very late and didn’t come home a’tall.”
“Does your mum mind him workin’ so late and all?”
“Everyone has to do their part,” said Molly stoutly.
“So you’ve seen him, then?”
“Um, yes, yes I have. He’s quite… well, if… tired.”
Charlie now glanced at the hamper. “Do I smell meat ?”
“Mrs. Pride, my nanny, did some shopping. I passed Victoria Park on my way here. I thought we could have a picnic, though there were some barriers up at the entrance.”
“Vicky’s closed on ’count of the war. They got the big ack-ack guns there now.”
“Well, if you don’t mind a long walk, we could go to Hyde Park. Although we could take a cab. I don’t know if the Underground goes that far right now.”
Charlie slipped his cap and jacket off the pegs by the door. “I don’t mind walkin’ when I need to. And I never mind eatin’. And like you said, it’s a nice day.” Charlie looked down at his achy, pinched feet. “But if you can spare the coins, a bus to the West End would be good.”
Charlie was finishing the last bit of fried sausage, tinned fish, and dried fruit, along with a chunk of cheddar.
Molly sat across from him on the blanket drinking from a cup of water.
She eyed the empty tin. “They had actual fish where I was staying along the coast.”
“Just got the tinned fish here,” said Charlie.
“Why is that?”
“U-boats. You don’t want to get sunk by no torpedo while you’re fishin’ in the Channel.”
“Oh, of course.”
“My gran says the shops got stuff that don’t look or smell like a fish. Maybe whale meat that’s, well, if you never have any in your whole life, that would be just fine.”
“Well, people have to make do with what they have. The ladies in my village used leg makeup because nylons are no longer available. Liquid Stockings, it was called. Came in a bottle. The women would even draw in hosiery seams with a black eyeliner pencil.”
Charlie looked up from his food. “ Leg makeup? Why, I never heard of such a thin’.”
“Does your grandmother live with you and your mother?”
Charlie said smoothly, “Yeah. My granddad died a while back and she come to live with me and Mum.”
“Does your father come home on leave often?”
“Not too often, no,” said Charlie, looking back at his plate.
Molly glanced over at a nearby statue. “I remember seeing that when I was much younger,” she said. “Do you like it?”
Charlie turned to see a naked boy atop a large sea creature. He frowned and shook his head. “Looks like he’s hurtin’ whatever that is.”
“It’s a dolphin . I read all about it. It was sculpted by Alexander Munro. He was a friend of Lewis Carroll’s, who wrote Alice in Wonderland . Although Lewis Carroll was his nom de plume. His real name was Charles Dodgson. And do you really think he’s hurting it?”
“How would you like someone’s knee on your back?” replied Charlie heatedly. “And look how he’s twistin’ its tail and pushin’ down on its head.”
“You don’t have to get so upset by a statue, Charlie.”
“I’m not upset,” he said irritably. He looked back at the statue. “But I don’t like it when people hurt thin’s that ain’t done nothin’ to them.”
“Yes, of course,” said Molly, taken aback by his retort. “I… I wouldn’t, either.”
She glanced over at several large antiaircraft guns with camouflage draping nestled in the middle of what had once been a pristine flower bed. She could see at least a dozen other guns like those, some stationary and fixed, and others on wheeled carriages. Soldiers with cigarettes in hand lingered here and there, ever at the ready if the sirens sounded and the German planes appeared. The nearly sixteen-foot-long gun barrels were aimed at the sky like enormous metal fingers pointing at something of interest there.
Molly had read that these weapons could heave twenty-eight-pound shells eight miles into the sky. Although the guns were not very accurate, the hope was that in skies crowded with German aircraft they would at least hit something, or drive the Luftwaffe fleets to ever higher altitudes, where their bombing accuracy would be sharply diminished.
Molly looked over at the paved walkways and remembered when vendors would be there selling every flavorful delicacy one wanted, like plump muffins and moist tea cakes and ice lollies. And back then there were comfortable sling chairs set around the park, where one could putter away the afternoon sunning one’s face or napping in serene contentment.
Now there were ugly holes in the earth and battered fountains and felled trees, and large guns instead of flowers.
Molly was startled when a man across a section of lawn pointed a camera at her and took a picture, the camera bulb heating up and then cooling down within the length of a breath.
She rose. “Excuse me, what are you doing?”
Charlie turned to look at the man. “What’s wrong?”
“He took my picture.”
As Molly headed over to him the man hurried off and soon disappeared among a crowd of folks walking along.
Charlie said, “Maybe he was taking a photo of that statue.”
“Maybe, but—”
“But what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It will probably sound quite mad to you, but I think someone is following me. Watching my house, that sort of thing. And now this man with the camera.”
“But why would they do that?”
“That’s just it, Charlie, I don’t know why.” Molly shook her head. “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it now.” She glanced up and said, “It looks like it might rain.”
Charlie played with a corner of the picnic blanket. “So, you went to see Mr. Oliver?”
“Yes, I needed your address.”
“Why?”
She took out the half crown. “Because I mean to give you this.”
Before last night Charlie would have taken the coin. But now, the sight of the money made him think of the dead copper. And Eddie. The large truck rolling over his small head. Lonzo’s threats. He made no move to take the offered payment.
She said, “I promised this to you in return for services rendered. You performed those services. Hence, you deserve to be paid. It’s only fair.”
“I don’t deserve nothin’,” said Charlie, his eyes starting to tear up.
“Charlie, what is it? What’s wrong?”
He wiped his eyes dry. “We best get on. You can get a taxi over there.”
“I can walk. It’s not so very far from here. And I can nip into Harrods on the way. I haven’t been there since I went to the country.”
“But not with the rain comin’. And a taxi’s better what with your basket and all.”
“But what about you?”
He shrugged. “I’m wet mor’n I’m dry. And I don’t mind walkin’ long ways. I do it every day.”
“Is your school that far from your home?”
“It’s… no, it’s not that far. But I walk other places, after school.”
They picked up their things and put them back in the hamper. At the taxi stand next to the park, Molly said, “I would like to meet your mum.”
“Okay, and I’d like to meet yours,” he shot back.
Molly turned a bit pink. “I… she’s not been well.”
“Your dad then.”
“Right. Well, we’ll have to see, won’t we?”
As they were waiting in the queue Molly glanced down at a newspaper that had been left on a bench. “Oh, how awful.”
She picked it up and showed Charlie the front page. There was a picture of a lorry with two bodies under sheets in front of it.
Molly read, “‘A constable and a boy were killed in a tragic accident. The constable has been identified as Ambrose Tapper, age thirty-one. He was married and had two young children. The name of the boy is, as yet, unknown. The driver of the lorry reported to police that the constable was chasing three youths when the accident occurred.’” She glanced at Charlie. “Isn’t that terrible?”
Charlie was staring at the bodies under the sheets and did not answer.
Molly continued to read. “‘The driver has given descriptions of the other boys to the authorities. And they are looking into reports of crime in the area, under the belief that the three lads had been engaged in some illegal act. The constable had been doing his duty in chasing them down when he met his sad end.’”
She looked at Charlie. “Some people simply have no respect for the law and the lives of others. Oh, listen to this.” She continued reading: “‘ They just run off , the lorry driver reported. Just run off and left their pal dead. What sort of person does that? ’” She folded the paper and put it back on the bench. “Well, I hope they catch those other boys. And I hope they feel wretched for leaving their poor friend behind.”
Gazing over her shoulder, the cold grip of the hangman’s noose latching on to his throat, Charlie managed to say, “There’s your cab, Miss.”
She got into the taxi and then held the coin out the window. “Please take it.”
Charlie said, “Thank you for the picnic. It was very nice.” Then he turned and walked off.
As the cab drove away Charlie snatched up the paper and tucked it inside his jacket. He walked all the way back home in the rain, wondering how he could have left Eddie lying dead there like that.
I deserve to be hanged.