LITMIR.BIZ

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a restaurant there. Vic Padovani.’ Coffin remembered Vic well. A willing man but clumsy, an unlucky soldier. But likeable. ‘We called him Robert Taylor.’ With looks such as his, Vic could get any girl he wanted, and did, but they never stayed with him long. Unlucky. ‘I’ll look him up.’

      They walked together up the hill towards Blackheath, not yet friends but ready to like each other, while recognizing they might have to be rivals.

      They had met at Morley College, South London, which had been the venue for a special training course for the new intake for the Metropolitan Police, coming straight in from the army. Alex was the one who had wanted to be a dancer. Both John Coffin and Alex Rowley were members of a group specially selected for accelerated promotion. They had done their time on the beat in another part of London, taken the Morley College course, and were now detective-constables sent out, almost like rations, to this part of South Bank London by the river. They knew that there must be a personal file on them in the police archives with observations on their character, intelligence and behaviour. They were both conscious of having covered up something.

      Mrs Lorimer’s Private Hotel, over-grandly called The Regency, was part of a terrace of brick houses run up by a speculative builder in 1850 and maintained in dubious repair by successive owners ever since. Bombed in 1940, the hotel had not had a pane of glass in its windows for nearly five years, making do with yellow paper which let in some light but no views. Mrs Lorimer, a tall, grey-haired woman forever in a hurry, had been an air-raid warden and had not lost her air of command. She had personally doused fire-bombs in the great fire-raid of December 1940, remained calm when an unexploded land-mine descended on the roof of a crowded shelter, been awarded the George Medal, and been the scourge and terror of her neighbours.

      She felt a certain stigma attached to having a police-constable (even if a detective) in the house. How would Lady Olivia feel? The old girl had a bottle of whisky at the moment and that was keeping her occupied for the time being, but when that was finished, she would be out and looking for battle. Mrs Lorimer sighed: she was difficult, but a ‘name’ and a family trust paid her bills.

      She showed the young men to their rooms, almost with an air of apology, which prepared them for what they were getting: a low basement room for John and an attic for Alex.

      Or they could choose. And could she have their ration books, please? Did policemen get extra, she had heard they did? She took their ration cards and departed triumphantly, muttering about individual butter dishes.

      ‘Toss you for it.’

      They tossed and John got the attic. He had been buried for twelve hours by a mortar shell on the way to the Rhine and was mildly claustrophobic as a result. Also, given a heightened perception of the world. Being blown up seemed to have peeled a skin off his eyes. He saw everything, fresh and clear as if it was a picture drawn by a sharp-eyed stranger.

      His room had one tiny window which opened outwards with a jerk that would have robbed it of any panes of glass if it had had any.

      From where he stood he could look down on the district in which he would be working. Below were the usual number of spivs, black marketeers, pimps, prostitutes, con men, thieves, and probably murderers. He would get to know most of them and if he did his job well they would disappear from the scene. For a while, anyway.

      He could see right down the hill towards the river. The Royal Observatory was to his right amidst the trees of Greenwich Park. Down there but not visible was Wren’s great palace, now a naval college, and a museum.

      He found the view pleasing and touching. He noticed that the roof had an area with the tiles missing; when it rained his room would be damp.

      Down there too was Stella and he meant to go on knowing her, but he wasn’t thinking of her. Down there also was someone else he was interested in. A faceless, nameless someone at the moment. He had his own problem there. Coffin’s own mystery, he thought.

      There was the sound of music floating up from below. A window was open and in that room someone was playing a piano.

      He closed his own window to go downstairs to call on Alex. As he went down the stairs he could swear that from behind one door he heard an old woman singing. She was singing ‘The Wearing of the Green’. That would have been treason once, he thought, might be even now for all he knew.

      Alex was sitting on his bed polishing his shoes.

      ‘Bed’s hard.’

      John Coffin sat down on the only chair. So was his bed hard. They wouldn’t stay here for ever, it was temporary while they looked around, but anywhere to live was hard to come by at the moment.

      ‘Hope she’s all right.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘The girl. Stella.’

      ‘Oh, she’ll fall on her feet,’ said Coffin; he knew a survivor when he saw one. He was one himself.

      There was a photograph of a pretty woman with a young boy on the table. It must be Alex’s mother.

      ‘You got a brother, Alex?’

      ‘No.’ He was the boy in the photograph, then.

      ‘Sister?’

      ‘A sister, yes. Half-sister. What about you?’

      ‘No,’ John Coffin considered. ‘Not as far as I know.’ He added, ‘Wonder if we’ll get anything to eat?’

      Stella did not regard herself as having fallen on her feet.

      She had run happily into the warm, dark womb of backstage Theatre Royal shouting that she had arrived, and straight into the arms of Joan and Albie Delaney who were standing briskly engaged in one of their arguments.

      They broke off to welcome her warmly, and at once got down to the essentials. ‘Want you on stage with book this afternoon.’ Joan Delaney never wasted words or time. Two sharp,’ and she turned back to her argument with Albie, which appeared to concern Eddie Kelly who was sitting smoking astride a wooden kitchen chair, apparently indifferent to what went on.

      ‘Now, Eddie, about the bloody lighting in the last act.’

      Joan and Albie worked as a team. Joan was said to be the practical one and Albie the artistic conscience, but Joan’s vaunted practicality existed only for theatrical purposes and did not extend to everyday life, where the pair lived in chaos. This showed itself at once with Stella.

      ‘What digs have you got me?’

      ‘Ah.’ Joan wrenched her head away from Eddie who was saying softly that it was his bloody face that the bloody lighting was turning bloody green and he bloody well wouldn’t have it. ‘I couldn’t get you in anywhere, dear. I tried old Madam Lorimer but she’d let her last room to two young men. You can share with us till something turns up. Doss down with us, Albie and me, in our sitting-room.’

      ‘That’s very kind of you.’ Any doubt in Stella’s voice was justified. The couple’s quarrels were famous and their cuisine notorious. Then she remembered that she was an actress and they were her boss. ‘Thank you,’ she said with false enthusiasm.

      ‘Poor girl.’ Eddie got up. ‘Haven’t we met?’

      ‘Yes. At the station. You took the cab.’

      ‘I had it ordered, my dear. In my permanent pay. More or less. My gammy leg.’ He had lost a foot at Dunkirk. ‘But I’d have given you a lift.’

      Stella turned to Joan and Albie. ‘Can’t I sleep in the dressing-room. Just for a bit? While I look round.’

      Eddie moved nearer towards her. ‘The girl will perish. All the dressing-rooms leak. Albie, assert your authority.’

      Albie asserted his authority, and in a characteristic way. ‘Eddie, dear boy, you do something. Why not try Rachel Esthart’s? You seem to have influence with her. She must have more empty rooms than Buckingham Palace.’

      ‘Rachel Esthart?’ Stella couldn’t

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