‘It’s too bad I have to close early. I lose a bit of business. But the kids come first.’
She left the market every day at half-past three, she told him, so as to collect her two grandchildren from the woman who looked after them during the morning and gave them their lunch.
‘They’ve been living with me for the past three years, them and their dad, when he’s here. Bloke called Denny Miller. He married my Margie. You never knew her. She was just a nipper when you was in Bethnal Green.’
‘I remember your son, Nelly.’
‘You mean Jack?’ She smiled. ‘Him that you kept out of stir?’
‘He wouldn’t have gone to prison. Not at his age.’
‘Maybe not, but they’d have sent him to a borstal for sure, and I’ve seen many a boy come out of there after a year or two and never the same again. Anyway, he turned into a good bloke, my Jack, thanks to you. Got himself a proper trade — he’s a fitter and turner. Works in an airplane factory up in Birmingham.’
She had glanced at Madden as she spoke: he was helping her clear her stall. They were loading the clothes into card-board boxes and the boxes on to a trolley — the kind used by railway porters to shift luggage.
‘What happened to Margie, Nelly?’
‘Copped it in the Blitz, that’s what.’ She bit her lip. ‘I heard their house had been hit, they were living just down the street from where we were, her and Denny, only he was often away, being a merchant seaman, so I ran down there and when I saw the house, what was left of it, I thought it was all up with them. Margie and the kids. Both floors had caved in. But when the firemen dug down they found them in the basement, Tom and little Sally. Covered in dust, they were, but not a scratch on them. Margie must have taken them down there when she heard the sirens and then gone upstairs to fetch something. Anyway she was in her bedroom when the bomb hit, so that was that. And then a month later I got the telegram …’
‘The telegram?’
‘About Bob … you remember him? My old man?’
Madden nodded. He had put his own bag on the trolley.
‘I was told he was lost at sea. I’m sorry, Nelly.’
She grunted something and was on the point of turning away when a thought seemed to strike her and she paused to peer at him; more keenly now.
‘Told was you? It wouldn’t have been by that copper who was down here the other day, asking questions about Alfie Meeks?’
‘Yes, I heard it from him.’ Madden nodded. ‘Billy Styles. We’re old friends.’
Nelly Stover absorbed the information in silence. Then she cocked an eye at him.
‘So you turning up here — it’s not just a coincidence then?’
‘Hardly.’ Madden met her glance and she guffawed.
‘Fancy that.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Well, if you’ve come down here to ask me about Alfie, you’re wasting your time. I told that copper everything I knew, which wasn’t much. And you’ve left it a little late, what’s more. I’ve got to go off now. I can’t stay here.’
‘I know. But I thought I might come with you, Nelly.’ Madden smiled. ‘I’d like to meet your grandchildren.’
‘Oh, you would, would you?’ She produced the same harsh, cackling laugh. ‘Well, if you like … I’ve got no objection.’ But she shook her head as she turned away. ‘My grandkids … my eye!’
Still chuckling to herself, she grasped hold of one of the handles of the trolley, Madden the other, and together they set off, pushing the clumsy vehicle over the cobbles, skirting the market and the line of chestnut vendors, pursuing a course set by Nelly that took them away from the river and up the side of the ruined warehouse into a street lined with houses, several of which were only bomb sites now, yawning holes from which the debris had long since been removed. It was in front of one of these that Nelly paused, and at her direction they steered the trolley down a narrow alley into what must once have been a small back garden where a potting shed still stood undamaged.
‘I managed to get hold of the key for this,’ she told Madden after she had unlocked the door and they had begun to move her goods inside. ‘Bloke who owned the house sold it to me for a fiver. It’s been worth its weight in gold.’
Inside the dark, unfloored structure there was a suitcase lying on the ground, and Nelly gave it a kick.
‘I don’t have to tell you who that belonged to, I reckon,’ she remarked. In fact, if ‘I’m not mistaken you knew Alfie when he was a lad. Back in Bethnal Green. Him and his family.’
Madden nodded. ‘I was talking to Billy about him the other day.’
She digested his statement in a silence that lasted for several seconds.
‘And you’re still telling me you ain’t a copper no more?’
‘That’s right, Nelly.’
His words produced another cackle of laughter from her.
‘Well, if you say so …’
What light there was in the sky was already dying as she locked the door behind them and they set off through the deepening dusk. In the distance the faint wail of an air-raid siren sounded, but faded quickly into silence. Across the river a searchlight probed the darkening sky. Paying no heed to either, Nelly plodded on, talking as she walked, offering Madden a brief account of her life in the years that had passed since they had last seen one another.
‘We left Bethnal Green, Bob and I, back in ’20, after the war. He’d been at sea since he was sixteen and he was in one of the first ships that was torpedoed — bet you didn’t know that. When this lot started he told me not to worry: said it couldn’t happen to him twice. Anyway we came over here, south of the river, and we never went back. I told that friend of yours, that copper, I hadn’t seen Alfie since he was a lad. But I heard he’d got himself sent to a borstal. Poor little sod. Never had a chance in life, not with a father like that.’
‘When did you go into the clothes business, Nelly?’ Madden paced along beside her.
‘A year ago come Christmas. With Bob gone I had to do something, and then I thought of these markets that had started up all over. I get hold of old clothes and do ’em up. Sell ’em like new. Well, not new, but you know what I mean. That’s what I did when I was a lass. Sewed. I was a seamstress. Bet you didn’t know that neither.’ She chuckled. But then who would have guessed you’d turn into a farmer. Officer Madden …’
They had been walking through narrow streets in a darkness so dense Madden had been able to make out little more than the dim outlines of the terrace houses on either side. Here the full blackout was still in force and only the occasional faint glow at the edge of a blind or curtain signalled the presence of life inside. With little sense of where they were any longer — he knew only that the river lay to their left — he had allowed Nelly to guide them, and when she came to a halt outside a front door he checked his own stride.
‘Wait here. I’ll just be a sec.’
She knocked on the door, was quickly admitted and in less than a minute was back again with two small figures who tumbled out into the dark of the street holding on to her hands.
‘This one’s Tom.’ She indicated the taller of the two figures. ‘And this here’s Sally. Say good evening to Mr Madden,’ she commanded them and they mumbled some words. ‘Our house is just down the road. I’ll have to give these two a bite of supper before I put them to bed. Then you and I can sit down together and have a quiet cup of tea.’
Her smile glinted in the darkness.
‘And maybe then you’ll tell me the real reason you came down here.’
Nelly Stover’s kitchen shone like a new pin. Though there was nothing in it — nothing Madden could see — that wasn’t old and well used, every surface from the rough pine table they were sitting at to the enamelled sink and the glass-fronted cabinet that housed Nelly’s best china showed the effects of repeated washing or polishing. Even the linoleum-clad floor had a sheen to it.
‘We bought this house twenty years ago, Bob and I,’ Nelly had told him when they came in off the street. She’d gone ahead to the kitchen, which was at the back, to fix the blackout blinds and switch on the light before inviting him to follow. ‘Lucky we didn’t lose it in the Blitz. There was three others in this street that copped it.’