Free Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Page A

danger.’
    ‘Including her!’ Aggie said as she looked across at Nan, and then she added, ‘How could you be so stupid? All the men who could fight were doing so! Your own brother was out there, for Christ’s sake!’
    Nan has never been one to back down when Aggie has a go at her. She changed from weeping misery to outright fury. Her face, reddened already by crying, became almost purple with rage. ‘What do you know, Agnes!’ she screamed. ‘You was just a kid at the time! Our men were fighting for their lives against the Hun and yet there were blokes all over this country who were too weak and too cowardly to do their duty!’
    ‘Oh, and it was up to you and a load of other mad bitches from West Ham to go out and put that right, was it?’ Aggie said. ‘Christ, you make me sick, Nancy! Sick!’
    ‘What is going on?’
    We looked up and saw the Duchess standing in the kitchen doorway. She must have been disturbed by all the shouting.
    ‘Nancy?’
    As soon as she saw the Duchess, Nan began to cry once again. My mother looked over to me for answers, but I couldn’t give her any. I didn’t know what I felt at that moment – about almost anything. I ran out of the kitchen, down into the yard and headed west towards Canning Town.

Chapter Six
    I was in Hannah’s bed when the sirens went off. Dot Harris, her landlady, has an Anderson in the back yard of the house she shares with Hannah and the other ‘old girls on the game’, as Hannah calls them. Not that Dot ever bothers to use it, or in fact any of the other women either. Prostitutes, even when not actually working at the time, are a fatalistic bunch. But that said, I asked Hannah if she wanted to go down the shelter anyway.
    She shook her head. ‘No. But H, if you want to go out running . . .’
    I’m generally pounding the streets during raids, but this time I was so exhausted, mainly by the emotions I was feeling, that I said I’d really rather stay put.
    ‘I’ve one of them tins of vegetable soup we can share if you like,’ Hannah said as she pulled a small saucepan out of the inside of her range and then put it up on the hob. She only has one damp little room in Dot’s house, but it does have a range and so Hannah can always have heat and hot – or rather more usually lukewarm – food and drink almost whenever she wants it.
    ‘That’d be nice,’ I said, as I reached one naked arm over to the table at the side of the bed and picked up my fags and matches.
    ‘Capstan?’
    ‘No, not for the moment,’ Hannah said as she rifled in the small cupboard over her sink and took out a tin of Heinz soup. God alone knew where she’d got that from, but I knew better than to ask. Like it or not, my lady friend is a prostitute and so her life is made possible often by means I prefer not to think about. After a bit of a struggle with the opener, Hannah got the tin undone and then poured its contents into the pan on the range. She added a bit of water from the kettle to make the soup go a little further.
    ‘I know you’re feeling angry at the moment,’ she said as she stood by the range and stirred the soup with a wooden spoon. ‘But I know you and so I know how much you love your family.’
    I’d told her about Nan just before she’d pulled me into her bed and made it all, temporarily, better. Now, in the calm that always follows our lovemaking, she was getting me to talk about it. She’s a very wise lady, my Hannah. It’s one of the many reasons why I love her.
    ‘Your Nancy was a silly girl,’ Hannah said. Outside, the drone of Luftwaffe bombers could now just be heard. ‘But a lot of girls were silly then. There was what I suppose you could call love of soldiers among them.’
    ‘Not all girls handed out white feathers,’ I said as I lit up my fag and then lay back down in her bed once again.
    ‘No, I know that,’ Hannah said. ‘And H, I can see why you’re angry, believe me. But however you feel about it, you’re going to have to