Free Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton Page B

Don’t even sit under the table no more. We had cup of char and a bit o’ toast an’ Bovril, listened to the bombers and went to bed. Tucked him in meself round about eleven, didn’t I, Johnnie?”
    Wilderness hated the last line. It was a lie too far, a snook too cocked, but then his squirming at this could easily be read as the embarrassment of a sixteen-year-old in the presence of adults. At least she hadn’t said they’d listened to the wireless, only to have them ask her to name what programmes they’d listened to.
    “Now, if you haven’t got any more questions, I’d appreciate being left in peace. I just lost me bloke. This is . . .” and here she paused. “A house in mourning.” Emphatically, her voice rising a fraction, “A house in mourning . . . so . . . be a mensch and just fuck off will you.”
    They left. Wilderness had no doubts they knew, no doubts that they’d go away only to come back.
    Merle lit up a second cigarette from the stub of the first, and poured herself a cup of tea. Silent tears at the corners of her eyes.
    A long exhale, a cloud of smoke and a first sip. The tears suspended in time and space, ready to roll.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “I didn’t want to say the word.”
    “What word?”
    “Dead. That word.”
    “And exactly how did Abner end up dead?”
    Wilderness told her. She tilted back her head while she listened, as though it were a matter of pride that a tear should not roll.
    “And where,” she said, still looking at the ceiling, “is the money?”
    “On the roof.”
    Now she looked at him, tears escaping her clutch to stream down her cheeks.
    “What?” she said. “Out in the bleeding rain?”
    §18
    Merle took the money. Over two hundred pounds. For safekeeping, she told him. All Wilderness could hear was “keeping,” and keep it she did. She kept all of Abner’s loot, just as Abner had. Abner had bunged him a couple of quid every so often, but kept the bulk. It seemed to Wilderness that the old man must have built up quite a stash in his time—a successful thief, with only a fence to pay off. Rationing was a leveller, but it was clear they had lived well before the war. Well, but not high. A discreet level of consumption, attracting, whatever the rumours on the street, as little attention as possible. Abner had a decent suit, Merle some posh frocks—but the money was never flaunted. No “drinks for everybody” in the pub, no diamonds on her fingers.
    All in all it seemed there must be a lot stashed away. The ill-gotten gains of all the jobs they’d pulled.
    Wilderness never found it. Now it was Merle who bunged him a couple of quid every so often—and she saw he never went short, peeling notes off a roll in her handbag—but Wilderness never found the stash.
    §19
    The day after Wilderness was called to a police lineup at the Leman Street nick. The bloke in evening dress who’d stood on the roof pointing a shotgun at him failed to pick him out.
    Toff diffidence saved him. The sense of fair play that would not have restrained most men restrained this one.
    “One has to be sure, d’ye see? Couldn’t point the finger at a chap without being one hundred per cent sure. It wouldn’t be cricket,” he had said to the duty sergeant.
    He could point a gun but not the finger?
    Wilderness could not hear the sergeant’s muted reply, but it was bound to be along the lines of, “But he’s the old bloke’s grandson. Bound to be him. Stands to reason.”
    And the toff had replied, audibly, “No it doesn’t.”
    And after that all the sergeant could do was turn him loose with, “Don’t think you got away with it, son. Yer card’s marked.”
    §20
    On May Day 1945 the news broke that Hitler was dead. For weeks now “It’ll be all over soon” had been a rolling cliché on the streets of London.
    Wilderness thought, “I’m free. They’ll never call me up now.”
    He had watched his schoolmates vanish into the army over the last year and