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.
The Remains of Jane
The next night Charlie ventured, as he sometimes did, to the sacred place. Several years had passed now, but the crater was still filled with rubble. And yet plants like hollyhocks, buddleia, and willow herbs, from fledgling straight on to robust, had reclaimed the land where the school had been, producing life from where once had occurred sudden, violent death.
It had been Charlie’s first day at the new school — they had moved to another neighborhood after their other home had been bombed. He and his mother had walked, holding hands, down the street. However, the closer they had drawn to their destination the more nervous Charlie had become, until he was tugging forcefully against his mother’s grip, pleading with her to let them stay together, and not to leave him in this strange place.
His mother had squatted down in front of him so they were eye to eye, smoothed down his hair and tidied up his clothes, and told him how the other children would welcome him as their new chum. They would read together and play together and learn so much that his head would be as full as his belly after a good meal, and how so very wonderful that would feel.
And because he loved his mother more than he loved anything else, and because she had never, ever spoken to him an untruth, they had continued on. A hug in the front corridor of the school and then they had said their final, tearful goodbyes.
Neither one at the time could have realized that an eager Bremen-born Luftwaffe bombardier riding in the belly of a Dornier 17, and following the distinctive line of the Thames, was about to end his mother’s life and transform her son’s future in ways unimaginable.
Charlie perched on a section of brick that had once been part of a wall of the school, slipped off his cap, rested his bony elbows on his slender thighs, and closed his eyes. He remembered the sirens, and then after that the whistle of the falling bombs.
Charlie thought a boy had been doing the whistling. He had no idea that it was the wind being pushed through a set of organ pipes riveted onto the bomb fins by the Germans to instill even more fear in the people down below. Jericho’s Trumpets, they would be dubbed.
For some reason, the warning sirens had been quite late in sounding, and thus they were told there was no time to go to a proper shelter. Wearing their gas masks, they had all frantically rushed back into their classroom and the teacher had shut the door. They crouched under their desks shaking with fear, as the sounds of the planes filtered through the ceiling.