I still hate thinking about those wards and corridors packed with human debris, some of the corpses piled on top of each other as if their last moments had been spent struggling, fighting for attention maybe; now they were locked together in eternal strife, or at least until their bones collapsed. There were smaller forms among them, the deteriorated bodies of children, but I refused to look at their little withered faces, treading through them carefully, my eyes averted, looking directly ahead. They were everywhere, those mouldering things that were once living, breathing people, in every space, every corner, as I'd known they would be, and I shuddered each time my foot brushed against something brittle and crumbly. The sour smell was everywhere too and I clamped my hand over my mouth and nose to mask the worst of it.
It took almost an hour to find the room I was looking for and still I hadn't toughened myself against the carnage around me: I was scared to my boots, and nausea was only a heave away. Even as I broke into locked glass cabinets and examined vials and jars, looked through cupboards for gauze and surgical dressings, then into drawers for pills and syringes, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see something I really didn't want to see. I gathered up anything that might be useful, including sedatives, forcing myself to be calm, to take my time and collect essentials and maybe not-so essentials, loading scissors and safety pins, antiseptic creams and boxes of Elastoplast, anything that came to hand, into a laundry bag I'd taken from a storage closet. Only when I was sure I was done did I run from that place.
It was growing light behind the distant rooftops as I drove along the broad Whitechapel High Street and weariness was making my eyelids heavy and my hands like lumps of lead on the steering wheel. It didn't take long to find my way back to Old Castle Street, and I was soon hurrying through the alleyway, my legs hardly able to support me, then pushing open the door to No 26.
Cissie was sitting on the stairs at the end of the short corridor, dawn light pressing itself through the begrimed window overhead to flush her hair and shoulders with its grey mantle. From her muffled sobs I knew I was too late. Stern was already dead.
20
WE LAY SIDE BY SIDE in the bedroom at the top of the house, both of us still fully clothed, Cissie watching me, one hand resting in the gap between us. I was on my back, looking out the window at the brightening sky, cigarette between my lips.
I'd led her to this room - next door was a much smaller, single-sized bedroom - and waited for her weeping to end, aware that those tears were not just over the death of Wilhelm Stern, whose body was covered by a single clean sheet on the bed in the room below us, but also over her friend's betrayal and everything that had followed in its aftermath: the botched attempt at blood transfusion, the slaying of poor old Albert Potter, the bombing of the Savoy, our flight downriver from the Blackshirts, leaving those other wretches, who'd been lured from their hideaways by the lights, to the mercies of a dying madman.
Her bewilderment at Muriel's treachery only increased her distress, because they'd become true friends -
or so Cissie had thought - during a period of massive upheaval when the world itself had been stripped of civilized guidelines and robbed of most of its inhabitants. Despite their different social backgrounds, they had formed an alliance, each one supporting the other in moments of despair, their companionship helping them keep their sanity. Until Muriel had discovered her own kind again in the form of Sir Max Hubble.
The guise she'd adopted in order to survive had fallen away like a cloak worn for warmth and not for taste, and that disloyalty - the choice Muriel had made - was something Cissie could not understand. The truth of it was - and I tried to make Cissie understand this - that the bitch had been loyal, but it was to her own class, to people of her own persuasion. Hell, Cissie had been there when Hubble had mentioned that Edward, England's abdicated king, demoted to dukedom, had aligned himself with the Nazi ideologies, along with certain others of the so-called British aristocracy. Before the war their persuasions were no great secret, according to other pilots I'd spoken with, and only the formal outbreak of hostilities had hushed them. Breeding above principles, was their warped philosophy. Their own ideals were more important to them than their own countrymen. It was a decadent and self-serving system, one that flourished throughout England's history, and something my own mother had been glad to leave behind when she made her home in America, even though she loved her birthplace, and these 'wrong-sorts', as she put it, were only a small minority. Muriel, I'd assured Cissie as I'd brushed her curls away from her grubby face, had only remained true to her own conditioning, and her double-cross amounted to little more than a natural alliance.
None of it seemed to help Cissie much, but maybe some of it eventually got through, because after a while she ceased her weeping, wiped her cheeks and nose with the back of her hand and started to talk...
'Wilhelm wanted you to know he was sorry.'
There was a hollowness to her voice in this bleak room, its only furniture the bed we lay on and an armchair with wooden arms, a pile of boys' clothing - different sizes, so I knew they'd belonged to more than one - resting on its cushioned seat I turned my head and her dirty face was not unlike a child's itself in the pale, morning light, only shadows beneath her eyes indicating the trouble she'd been through.
'He managed to talk?'
Towards the end. I think the pain lessened, but because of that he knew he was dying.'
'Why sorry?'
'Oh, not for what he'd done. He said he'd only been fighting for his country during the war, carrying out his duty, just like us.'
'Yeah, his duty.' I dragged on the cigarette, then took it from my lips, hanging it over the edge of the bed, smoke curling up between my fingers.
'He was apologizing for Germany's final action, not for his role as a soldier.'
'He was a spy.'
'Soldier, spy - it was all the same to him. But he was deeply ashamed of what Hitler did to his own country and the rest of the world. He said Germany's inevitable defeat should have been accepted with honour. He didn't want you - us - to judge his race by the mad dogs who ruled them. Only the High Command had known about the rockets and what they were capable of.'
'What's it matter? Nothing can change what happened.' My eyes closed. Yet, weary though my body was, my mind refused to shut down: it was still buzzing with everything that had happened since yesterday.
'He just wanted you to know, Hoke, that was all.'
'I figured him right and got him wrong. I didn't trust him, but he saved my life.'
'Wilhelm understood that. He didn't blame you for your suspicions, Hoke.'
'Did he manage to tell you what his mission was over here during the war?'
'He found it difficult to speak towards the end - he was choking on his own blood. But he tried ... oh, he tried so hard...'
I thought the tears would start again as she cast her eyes downwards, but she straightened, her mouth set tight
'He wanted to set the record straight between you and him, something about honour among enemies. I think he wanted to die with your respect, Hoke, not your hatred.'
'He'd already earned my respect' I lifted the cigarette again and held it over my lips for a moment. 'So what was he up to?'
'He told me his plane was shot down, but it wasn't over the East Coast, it wasn't a Heinkel, and it wasn't in 1940. It happened one night in '44, a few weeks before D-Day, and the aeroplane was a ... what was it? ... a Junkers. Yes, he said it was a Ju 188. It was gunned down over the Solent and the seven others on board with him were all killed. He managed to bale out before the burning plane crashed.'