When he returned to his flat he opened Gran’s door and stood there staring at her lying on her mattress for the longest time. An image flashed through his mind of Lonzo breaking into their home, his knife raised, Gran screaming, and the blade coming down...
Trembling with fear and shock, he fled to his cupboard. He lay there fully dressed, his mind full of a darkness far blacker than the tar on the windows.
Eddie was dead. And a copper, too. A hanging job. What they had done tonight was a hanging job, thought Charlie.
His eyes were still open when Gran rose in the morning and kissed him goodbye. He leapt up and followed her, making sure she got to her bus all right and that Lonzo was nowhere around.
When Charlie got back to his bed he finally fell into an exhausted sleep, until the knock came hours later. He rose, thinking it must be the coppers and he would have to flee out the window, until he heard her voice.
A Fleeting Meeting
“Hello, Charlie Matters,” 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.