'Sorry about that, lad,' I said. 'He's harmless, really.'
The GI looked at me with those big brown eyes of his and nodded solemnly.
Now that I was closer, I could see that the object Obediah had referred to was some sort of gold chain with tiny trinkets suspended from it, a very unusual thing for a man to be wearing. 'What exactly is that?' I asked, pointing. 'Just out of curiosity.'
He brought his arm up so I could see the chain. 'It's called a charm bracelet,' he said. 'My lucky charm bracelet. I usually try to keep it out of sight.'
Everything on the chain was a perfect miniature of its originaclass="underline" a gold locket, a cross, a monkey, an angel, a golden key, a tiny pair of ballet slippers, a lighthouse, a tiger and a train engine. The craftsmanship was exquisite.
'Where did you get it?' I asked.
'Fishing,' Cornelius said.
'Pardon?'
'Fishing. Caught it fishing in the Mississippi, down by the levee, when I was boy. I decided then and there it would be my lucky charm.'
'It's a beautiful piece of work,' I said. I held out my hand. 'Richard Palmer. Dick to my friends.'
He looked at my outstretched hand with suspicion for a moment, then slowly he smiled and reached out his own, the palm as pink as coral, and shook firmly. 'Pleased to meet you, Mr Palmer,' he said. 'I'm Cornelius Jubb.'
I smiled. 'Yes, I heard.'
He glanced over at Obediah and his cronies, who had lost interest now and become absorbed in a game of dominoes. 'And I don't know where the name came from,' he added.
I guessed that perhaps some Yorkshire plantation owner had given it to one of Cornelius's ancestors, or perhaps it was a contraction of a French name such as Joubliet, but it didn't matter. Jubb he was, in a place where Jubbs belonged. 'You don't sound Southern,' I said, having heard the sort of slow drawl usually associated with Louisiana on the wireless once or twice.
'Grew up there,' Cornelius said. 'Then I went to college in Massachusetts.'
'What are you doing here all by yourself?' I asked. 'Most American soldiers seem to hang around with their mates, in groups.'
Cornelius shrugged. 'I don't know, really. That's not for me. They're all… y'know… fighting, cussing, drinking and chasing girls.'
'You don't want to chase girls?'
I could have sworn he blushed. 'I was brought up to be a decent man,' he said. 'I'll know when the right girl comes along.' He gestured to the charm bracelet again and smiled. 'And this is for her,' he added.
I could have laughed at the naivety of his statement, but I didn't. Instead, I offered to buy him another drink. He accepted and offered me a Lucky. That was the beginning of what I like to think of as an unlikely friendship, but I have found that war makes the unlikeliest of things possible.
You might be wondering by now why I wasn't at war with the rest of our fine lads. Shirker? Conchie? Not me. I saw enough carnage at Ypres to last me a lifetime, thank you very much, but the fact of the matter is that I'm too old to be a soldier again. After the first war I drifted into the police force and finally rose to the rank of Detective Inspector. Now all the young men have gone off to fight, of course, they need us old codgers to carry the load back home. Just as I was getting ready to spend my twilight days reading all those books I never read when I was younger – Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Trollope. Ah, well, such is life, and it's not a bad job, as jobs go. At least I thought so until events conspired to prove me wrong.
Cornelius, as it turned out, was one of about three hundred coloured persons – or Negroes, as the Yanks called them – in an engineering regiment transferred up from the West Country. During our conversations, mostly in the Nag's Head, but often later at my little terraced back-to-back over carefully measured tots of whisky, no longer readily available, I learned about hot and humid Louisiana summers, the streets, sounds and smells of New Orleans and the nefarious ways of the colour bar and segregation. I had already heard of problems between white and coloured GIs in other parts of the country. Apparently, the American military command wanted to institute the same sort of colour bar they had at home, but we British didn't want that. I had also heard rumours that in some towns and villages a sort of unwritten code had grown up, fostered by whispering campaigns, as regards which pubs were to be frequented by Negroes and which by whites.
I also learned very quickly that Cornelius was a shy young man, a bit of a loner, but no less interesting or intelligent for that. His father was a Baptist minister, and he had wanted his son to go to college and become a schoolteacher, where he might have some positive influence on young men of the future. Though Cornelius had instead followed a natural interest in and flair for the more practical and mechanical aspects of science, he was remarkably well travelled and well read, even if there were great gaps in his education. He had little geography, for example, and knew little beyond the rudiments of American history, yet he spoke French fluently – though not with any accent I'd heard before – and he was well versed in English literature. The latter was because of his mother, he told me. Sadly deceased now, she had read children's stories to him from a very early age and guided him towards the classics when she thought he was old enough.
Cornelius was homesick, of course, a stranger in a strange land, and he missed his daddy and the streets of his hometown. We both had a weakness for modern music, it turned out, and we often managed to find Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman broadcasts on the wireless, even Louis Armstrong if we were lucky, whenever the reception was clear enough. I like to think the music helped him feel a little closer to home.
All in all, I'd say that Cornelius and I became friends as that spring gave way to summer. Sometimes we discussed currents events – the 'bouncing bombs' raid on the Eder and Möhne dams in May, for example, which he tried to explain to me in layman's terms (without much success, I might add). We even went to the pictures to see Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush with a couple of broad-minded Land Girls I knew. That raised more than a few eyebrows, though everything was above board. As far as I could tell, Cornelius stayed true to his word about waiting for the right girl to come along. How he knew that he would be so sure when it happened, I don't know. But people say I'm married to my job, which is why my wife left me for a travelling salesman, so how would I know about such things?
One August night, just after the Allies had won the battle for Sicily, the local GIs all got a late pass in honour of Patton's role in the victory. After an evening in the Nag's Head drinking watery beer, Cornelius and I stopped up late, and after he left I was trying to get to sleep, my head spinning a little from a drop too much celebratory whisky, when there came a loud knocking at my door. It was a knocking I wish I had never answered.
Brimley Park was a thick wedge of green separating the terraces of back-to-backs on the east side and the more genteel semi-detached houses on the west. There was nothing else but a few wooden benches and some swings and a slide for the kiddies. Chestnut trees stood on three sides, shielding the heart of the park from view. There used to be metal railings, but the Ministry of Works appropriated them for the war effort a couple of years ago, so now you could make your way in between the trees almost anywhere.
Harry Joseph, who had been dispatched by the beat constable to fetch me, babbled most of the way there and led me through the trees to a patch of grass where PC Nash and a couple of other local men stood guard. It was a sultry night and the whisky only made me sweat more than usual. I hoped they couldn't smell it on me. It was late enough to be pitch dark, despite double summer time, and, of course, the blackout was in force. As we approached, though, I did notice about eighteen inches of light showing through an upper window in one of the semis. They'd better be quick and get their curtains down, I thought, or Obediah Clough and his ARP men would be knocking at their door. The fines for blackout violations were quite steep.