Chapter 76
Cook let the evening crowds swirl around him. He was at an impasse. No route forward. No information. No job to be done.
Reynolds had taken Dottie back to the shelter. He’d be briefing Gracie by now.
Cook had made a mess of things. He’d got nowhere, and now a man was dead. He should go back to the farm. A short enough walk down to Victoria, catch a late train back to Uckfield.
But something held him here. Leaving now would be like walking out of a show halfway through.
‘Is it that dreadful in there?’
Cook recognised the voice without needing to turn around. The American woman. The journalist.
‘I was having the same thought,’ she said. ‘Sometimes you want to sit in a regular bar and have a regular drink, without all the hysteria.’
They were across the road from the Empire. Cook had walked here without thinking. The place the trail had gone cold.
‘You look like you’d like to buy a girl a pint,’ she said.
They found a pub on a side street a couple of hundred yards from the hotel. A narrow frontage, one bow window, blacked out. A heavy, narrow door set back in an alcove.
Cook bought two pints of best. Eleanor had been very insistent – whatever he was drinking.
He carried them through the fog of cigarette smoke to the window seat – a broad bench set in the curving bay.
The pub was busy. She’d done well to find a space.
Looking at the expanse of glass at her back, Cook realised why.
Thin strips of tape, criss-crossed across the windows, peeling off in curls, defeated by the humidity generated by the crowd.
If a bomb landed in the street, the window would be death for anyone near it.
Eleanor sat in the window seat, nodded to him as she took her drink. They clinked glasses as he took his place next to her. Awkward, sitting side by side, facing the interior of the pub.
‘Cheers!’ she said.
‘Cheers,’ he reciprocated. He was somewhat unsure why he was here. Like being ordered by your sergeant major. You didn’t stop to think, you just did. In the absence of a way forward, it wasn’t the worst detour.
The beer was excellent. He savoured it.
‘I gather you’ve become persona non grata at the hotel,’ she said.
He must have looked surprised, because she smiled, like she’d admitted to knowing a secret.
‘I keep my eyes open,’ she said. ‘Hard not to pick up on what’s going on if you watch for long enough.’
‘What is going on?’ he asked.
‘The usual, for a big hotel,’ she said. ‘Prostitution, of course. Extortion. Several long-running scams working their way through the process.’
‘Seems like it’s a family business,’ Cook said. ‘All those brothers.’
She nodded.
‘A fascinating twist,’ she said. ‘When I arrived it was all Italians. Then Mussolini declared war on Britain and suddenly the Italians had to be rounded up, sent to concentration camps.’
‘Internment,’ Cook said.
She made a face. ‘You say tomahto, I say tomayto.’
‘Then what?’
‘It was chaos. Half the staff gone. You couldn’t get a decent drink for love nor money.
And then the next morning, nine o’clock sharp, a whole new crew.
Doorman. Front desk. Ma?tre d’. Bartender.
The lot. All of them related, if you ask me.
New girls, too. A complete regime change, overnight. Very impressive.’
Cook thought of Mr Jones in his jazz club, seeing an opportunity, sending his boys in.
‘Now, you’ve pumped me for information, time for me to ask some questions,’ she said.
Cook sipped his beer.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. She took a notepad from her inside pocket. Pulled a pencil from the same pocket.
‘Remember I’m a journalist,’ she added. ‘So you’ve been warned.’
She put pencil to paper.
‘What do you do?’ she asked.
‘I’m a farmer.’
‘Not many farms around here,’ she said. ‘What brings you to the big, bad city?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said.
She put her pencil down. Took a long draught of her pint.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘We’ve got all night.’
*
The hotel was quiet. The dining room was dark, and a skeleton staff remained in the lobby.
‘Guests are sheltering in the basement,’ the man behind the desk said, as he handed Eleanor her key.
‘No, thank you,’ Eleanor replied. ‘The people of New York want to know what’s going on as the bombs fall. Can’t do much reporting from a basement.’
The desk clerk glared at Cook.
‘He’s not welcome here,’ he said to Eleanor.
‘I’m paying for a room,’ Eleanor replied. ‘I’m allowed to have any guests I want.’
‘Not him,’ the clerk replied.
‘Perhaps I should do a story about the prostitution racket you’re running out of the bar,’ she said, taking out her notebook. ‘My readers love that kind of thing. What’s your name?’
She leant forward, theatrically, peering at the clerk’s name badge. She wrote it in her notebook.
‘Or maybe we should both mind our own business. What do you think?’
*
Eleanor’s room was a world apart from the box room Cook had been given. A luxurious four-poster bed faced a floor-to-ceiling window. Eleanor pulled a cord by the window, and the curtains parted.
It was like watching the war on a cinema screen.
Searchlights panned across the clouds, catching the highest buildings as they traversed the sky.
Cook didn’t know the city well, but St Paul’s was unmistakable, its dome higher than any of the surrounding buildings.
Beyond, he could see the steel skeletons of cranes, watching over the docks.
The clouds themselves were alight, pulsing with explosions.
The order had come from Churchill himself – every available anti-aircraft gun in the country had been sent to defend the capital.
Every gun was to be firing non-stop. Cook didn’t know how effective they’d be, but he had to admit it felt comforting.
The eastern sky was orange as once again the docks burnt.
Eleanor poured two glasses of whisky, handed one to Cook.
‘Cheers,’ she said.
They drank. Cook checked his watch, calculated the walk to catch the last train. He’d have to be going, if he was going.
Eleanor finished her drink with a second gulp and hurried into the bathroom, leaving the door open behind her.
‘You said you’re here to describe it,’ Cook said. ‘But which side are your readers on? You must have just as many immigrants from Germany as from England.’
‘We’re still deciding,’ Eleanor shouted out of the bathroom. ‘Churchill’s doing everything he can to lure us in, but there are still lots of people in power who think this whole thing has nothing to do with us.’
Cook stood at the window, like having a balcony seat for London’s final act. It was obscene, of course, but no more obscene than anything else in war. Certainly a lot more comfortable than sheltering in a trench as the bombs flew, or cowering in a cave overlooking a mountain pass.
‘What do you think?’ Cook asked.
There was a creak from the bed behind him. Cook looked at the reflection in the window. Eleanor had returned from the toilet and kicked off her shoes, and now she lay on the bed, on her front. Watching him, watching the war.
‘I think we should put this bed through its paces,’ Eleanor said.
‘Are all you Americans this forward?’ he asked.
‘I can’t speak for the entire population,’ she said.
‘I thought you wanted to hear my story,’ he said. ‘Why I’m in London, and not on my farm.’
‘Sounds like more of a breakfast conversation,’ she said.
‘There’s a girl,’ he said. ‘She’s in trouble.’
Eleanor raised an eyebrow.
‘There’s a chance she’s dead,’ Cook continued, ‘but it’s not a certainty.’
Eleanor got up and stood in front of Cook. She unbuttoned his shirt. Cook let her.
‘It must seem like a very small thing,’ he said, ‘compared to thousands being killed by the bombs.’
‘Is it thousands?’ she asked.
‘You’re the journalist,’ he said. ‘Just a guess, from what I’ve seen in the docks.’
‘What’s it like down there?’
Cook thought of the shelter. The child’s hand, covered in dust, the rest of the body under tons of concrete.
‘Not pretty,’ he said.
‘You think the people are with Churchill?’ she asked, undoing his belt.
‘No,’ he said, realising it was the truth as he said it. ‘There’s no support. No food. No housing. There’s looting. Not a good situation. Not like all this . . .’. He looked around the luxurious hotel room, the sheer opulence of ice cubes clinking in his glass.
‘That’s what I’m here to report,’ she said. ‘But they’ve got people watching me. Making sure I don’t see too much.’
‘People?’
‘My chaperones,’ she said. ‘Keeping me safe. Making sure I see what they want me to see. Working-class neighbourhoods with Union Jacks in every window, cheering Churchill when he gets out of his armoured car for ten seconds.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘I gave them the slip,’ she said. ‘They think I’m in the basement bar, listening to jazz.’
‘You should come to the island, see what’s happening.’
‘Would you take me?’
‘It’s a free country,’ Cook said. You can come with me or you can get on the tube and see for yourself.’
‘I’ve never taken public transport,’ she said, ‘sounds like quite the adventure.’
She kissed him.
‘What about the countryside?’ she asked. ‘What’s the sentiment down there?’
Cook opened his mouth to answer, but something stopped him. He thought of the posters behind the check-in desk:
Keep Mum, She’s Not So Dumb
Careless Talk Costs Lives
Simplistic messages, unnecessary and over the top. Heavy-handed propaganda designed to keep people in a state of panic. But now he found himself talking freely with a woman he’d only recently met. Suddenly the posters didn’t seem so unnecessary.
‘Come down sometime and I’ll give you the tour,’ he said.
She peeled off his shirt, threw it towards a chair.
It slid down the polished leather and crumpled on the floor.
Cook felt a flash of irritation – fought the urge to hurry over and pick it up.
He distracted himself by looking at the cityscape.
A bomber went down, trailing fire. A series of explosions erupted where it had gone down, its own bombs triggered by the impact. Somewhere beyond St Paul’s.
‘I’m going to need you to get your head in the game,’ Eleanor said, as she stepped out of her dress. She let her slip fall to the floor. Naked, she looked suddenly vulnerable. Exposed. Cook put his arms around her, feeling goosebumps on her skin.
‘You’ve got my full attention,’ he said.
He reached for the curtain pull.
‘Leave them open,’ she said. ‘We can watch.
She crawled into bed, held the covers open, ready for him.
‘I trust I’m not going to end up on the front page,’ Cook said.