Free Last Rights by Barbara Nadel

scars he got on the Somme. Quite often he’d be passing at night and sometimes he’d even come out running
     with me, still does. After all Ken, like me, knows what that’s about. Ken never goes down any shelter either.
    I rolled a fag for myself, stuck it in my face and then took hold of the boys’ bridles. Ken took himself off to the back of
     the stable where we store the hay and sat down, out of the horses’ line of sight. And then it began. The first explosion,
     deafening, rocked the ground beneath our feet. Rama tried to rear but somehow I managed to hold him. I could feel Sita’s body
     shivering beside me. Different, quieter personality. It’s always Rama causes damage to the stable.
    Being in there, trapped if you like with the horses,would have been unbearable without Ken. Even at the height of the raid, when all I could see through the cracks in the door
     was red and yellow flashes of flame, there was always Ken with his great selection of the old songs, ‘Nellie Dean’ and his
     ‘Tipperary’, which still leaves a bitter taste even now, but it keeps me alert even if it’s only to curse at him. There’s
     something very dark about those old Great War songs, especially when they’re sung by a man with only half a face.
    In the morning I had to carry the Duchess back up to her room. If anything, she was even stiffer than she’d been the day before.
     In some areas it doesn’t matter what you do to try to make an Anderson watertight, it just carries on taking in water. Like
     a trench.
    Once again ‘Hancock and Sons’ had survived the latest attack from the air, so the Duchess and Nan said a quick little prayer
     to the Virgin Mary for that. The rest of us, including Pearl Dooley and Velma, started the business of picking up things that
     the blast had knocked on the floor, and when Aggie got back from Tate’s, the cleaning started. She’s a dab hand with the mop
     and brush, our Aggie, as was Pearl Dooley, who also mucked in. When Ag asked her to use our Hoover, though, Pearl looked at
     it like it was something off another planet. ‘I’ve never seen nothing like this before,’ she said, when Aggie demonstrated
     it for her. ‘It’s marvellous that, isn’t it? What a lovely place you do have here.’ Laughable really, given the state of our
     shop. But also a good indication that whatever bullying the Dooleys might do and whateverbunce that might bring them, it was probably the pub rather than the home that got the benefit.
    The Duchess, in her many hours cooped up with them, had told Pearl that she and Velma could stay with us for as long as they
     liked. She’s a very generous heart, my old mum. But I knew this wouldn’t go down well with either Nan or even the more generous
     Aggie, so when Doris eventually made it in, just before one, I took her to one side. We had no work booked for that day so
     after I’d telephoned Albert Cox and learned that Kevin Dooley’s body was to be held at his shop until the funeral, I had a
     word with her about taking Pearl and Velma down to Spitalfields to look for this sister, Ruby.
    ‘I don’t know of no shikseh staying with no paper-and-string man,’ Doris said, when I told her the information Pearl had given
     me. ‘Mind you, don’t mean it ain’t true. There’s quite a lot in that line of work.’
    She told me the name of one paper-and-string man she knew and said that talking to him might be a start.
    ‘Be better if you had a bit more Yiddish,’ Doris said, shaking her head at the thought of it. ‘There’s a lot down our way
     don’t do so well with English, Mr H, especially the old ones. They might not tell you anything even if they know.’
    I did think for a bit that I might take Doris with us. But then I had a better idea. ‘What the roads like, Doris?’ I said,
     as I ushered what were not an enthusiastic Pearl and Velma out of the door.
    ‘Bloody awful,’ she replied. ‘You’d do better walking today, Mr H. Mind you, go