Free After the Mourning by Barbara Nadel Page B

‘Look, Mr H,’ he said, ‘it’s up to you. I’m just here to tell you because I think you should have the choice – you’re family. The coppers want to take your Stella up to Claybury. And we all know what that means.’ He sipped his tea noisily and appreciatively.
    I breathed in deeply, then shuddered. Claybury is a grim Victorian asylum just to the north of Walthamstow. It’s where they take East-Enders when their minds break under the weight of the work and the poverty that follows almost everyone here from the cradle to the grave. With its ice-cold baths and the numerous other punishments available to the staff when patients fail to ‘behave’, Claybury is a place of nightmares for a madman like me. I know I could be put inside its walls within a heartbeat. Just one outburst in front of the wrong person would be enough. I felt myself sweat.
    ‘I’d better get over there, then,’ I said, as I took my jacket off the back of my chair and stood up. ‘Thanks for letting me know, Johnny.’ I shook his hand.
    ‘Oh, you’re welcome, Mr H,’ Johnny Webb replied, as he finished his drink and stood up too. ‘I’m so sorry I had to bring you such bad news. We’ll carry on looking for your uncle Percy, but . . .’ He shrugged.
    ‘I know.’
    ‘Well, I’d best be going and let you get on,’ he said. ‘Let me know how it goes with your Stella, won’t you, Mr H?’
    ‘I will.’
    I patted him on the back as he left my dingy, boarded-up premises. A lot of people criticise the ARP and sometimes with good cause but, like any group of people, you have good, bad and on occasion villains too. Like most people, I’ve heard stories about wardens looting bombed-out houses. But that’s not Johnny Webb. Like me, he just wants to get on with his job and his life and make enough money to feed his family. Unlike me, he still has one window left in his shop.
    ‘You’ve got them two sisters up Green Street, Bella and Alice Goring, at twelve,’ Doris said, as she came back into the shop carrying the business diary.
    Green Street, even using the horse-drawn hearse, is only a few minutes from the shop so if Arthur and Walter got busy preparing the vehicle and I got my skates on, I could get over to the police station to see how Stella was before the Goring sisters’ funeral. After all, if she was really bad I’d have to let them take her to Claybury. If she wasn’t I’d speak to the Duchess and the girls about her billeting in with us. They’d welcome her, I knew. Even if she was barmy they’d take her. I just wasn’t sure whether I could take her if she was screaming or crying all the time.
    I put my hat on and said to Doris, ‘I’ve got to go out for a bit. I’ll be back at eleven.’
    Doris frowned. ‘Yes . . .’
    ‘Tell Arthur and Walter I want the hearse and the horses spick and span by the time I get back,’ I said. ‘Make sure the lads are well supplied with tea, won’t you, Doris? It’s cold out there today.’
    I know some of the blokes up at Plaistow police station. One of the constables, Fred Bryant, has held a torch for our Doris for some time. He knows she’s married but he pops in to ‘say hello’ from time to time. He’s more than a bit of an idiot. Not that I had come to see Fred this time. I went straight to his guv’nor, Sergeant Hill, who took me to a small room at the back of the building, which was quiet, he said.
    ‘We’ve one of the nurses from Samson Street Hospital with her,’ Sergeant Hill said, as he opened the door on Stella, who was staring straight ahead of her like a person in a waking dream. ‘She’s calmed down a bit now, but you’ll just have to see what you think, Mr Hancock.’
    In her younger days, Stella had been blonde like our Aggie. Now her hair was a sort of soft grey, which wasn’t unattractive, even if the straight cut she had on it was far from flattering. But thin and largely disregarded, by everyone but her own, Stella was, like Nan, pretty