After the Mourning

Barbara Nadel

IT'S THE LONDON BLITZ OF 1940, and undertaker Francis
Hancock has seen the worst that humanity can do to itself.
Why then does the murder of a young gypsy girl in Epping
Forest move him so much?
Travellers, gypsies, the homeless, deserters and German spies inhabit this stretch of open ground that was once her home. Francis knows it's not wise to delve into this human
melting pot, but he is drawn to the exotic customs of the gypsies, their music and magic.
But as he further investigates the slaughter of the girl, the death toll rises and Francis begins to uncover a much bigger conspiracy, at the heart of which lies something even the German Fuhrer is prepared to kill for...
After the Mourning

Barbara Nadel

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Praise for Barbara Nadel:

'The delight of the Nadel book is the sense of being
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Also by Barbara Nadel

The Hancock series: Last Rights

Inspector Ikmen series:
Belshazzar's Daughter
A Chemical Prison
Arabesk
Deep Waters
Harem
Petrified
Deadly Web
Dance with Death


Copyright © 2006 Barbara Nadel

The right of Barbara Nadel to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in Great Britain in 2006 by REVIEW

First published in paperback in 2006
by HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

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All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to
real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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To Grandma and Grandad P,
Grace, Evelyn, Ann and Thomas

Acknowledgements

Much of what follows in this novel springs from my
own prior knowledge and experience. However, I
would also like to acknowledge the debt I owe to the
works of Dominic Reeve, the Gypsy-English/English
Gypsy Concise Dictionary by Atanas Slavor, and the
Patrin Gypsy website ( www.geocites.com/~patrin.
The Night of 31 October 1940,
Eagle Pond, Epping Forest,
Essex



I'd had a feeling it would end like this. Secrets
do. The way of life this poor girl's people keep
depends, to some extent, upon what is kept
close and sacred between themselves. And, in a way, it
is natural for most folk to have the odd secret or two.
But this girl had been different. She had been
consumed by what is hidden. I looked down at what
her father had so recently uncovered on the ground and
said, 'I can't touch her. I mustn't. This is something for
the coppers.'
'But...'
'Someone's cut her throat!' I said as I, nevertheless,
bent down to get a closer look at what remained of
Lily Lee. As well as the gash across her throat there
was blood around her naked private parts. Her once
gay-looking dress, hitched up and ripped by whoever
had done this to her, was covered with gore.
'If it's murder then we'll deal with it ourselves,' a
man I recognised as a relative said. Not that many of
the dark and dusty men around me weren't relatives of
one sort or another to the dead girl. Gypsies travel with
their own. They have loyalty to and affection for no
others. However, the only reason I was grubbing about
in the earth in Epping Forest in the middle of the night
with a group of Gypsies was precisely because I wasn't
one. Gypsy tradition dictates that dead bodies are both
dirty and dangerous and cannot be handled in any way
- except by what they call gauje, non-Gypsies. Because
I am one of those, and an undertaker by trade, the Lee
family, in the shape of Lily's little brother Charlie, had
come to get me in the middle of the night to take care
of the girl for them.
'Lily has been murdered and, and other things have
been done to her too, I think,' I said, skirting around
the subject of the girl's possible violation as best I
could. Contrary to what a lot of people believe, Gypsies
can be very strait-laced folk on occasion. 'The police
need to know. I have to tell them. I can't do anything
with Lily until they know. Whoever did this needs to
be caught, and soon.'
None of the Gypsies, all of whom were men, spoke
or moved. I admit, despite the circumstances, I found
it restful. Ever since the bombing began back in
September there's been hardly a moment of silence in
my life. And I like silence. It's one of the reasons I do
the work that I do. There had been a raid early on in
the evening but that had been a long time before
Charlie had appeared on my doorstep, insisting I get
my new motor hearse out to drive over to 'our Lily'. I'd
thought that Lily, like her sister before her, had just
died. I hadn't imagined this - bloody murder on All
Hallows Eve, the night when, barmy people say, the
dead walk about. In my experience, the dead only shift
when the living move them.
The sound of sobbing to my left caused me to turn
in that direction. I could just make out the sharp profile
of Lily's brother-in-law, Edward, crying his eyes out. As
soon as he noticed me looking at him, he spoke. 'The
police will find nothing,' he said. 'Nothing!'
I frowned. Was he telling me that the police
wouldn't find anything because Lily had been
murdered by someone in the clan? But that wasn't what
Edward had meant. Lily's murder, he claimed, was a lot
more complicated than that.
'It is the mulo of Rosie,' he said, in his strange,
foreign accent. 'It has always been. Everything Lily
saw was the mulo, come to take its revenge upon her.'
At the time I didn't know what a mulo was, but I
thought it had to be some kind of spirit or ghost of
Edward's dead wife, Rosie. 'But why would Rosie want
to hurt Lily? She was her sister,' I said. Although I don't
hold with ghosts and suchlike, I am accustomed to
having conversations of this sort with the many
mourners who do.
'Because I did lie with Lily, that's why,' Edward said,
as his chin descended on to his chest. 'While Rosie still
breathed I lied with Lily. Now this is the end of it.'
He pointed to the blood-soaked corpse at our feet,
then let out a tremendous howl, like a wolf.
Chapter One



Gypsies and tinkers have roamed the streets and
forests in and around London for ever. Always
set apart - feared sometimes, too -- they ply
their traditional trades, mainly for non-Gypsies: carving
and selling pegs, weaving baskets, telling fortunes and
knowing all there is to know about horses. It was this
latter trade that first put me in touch with the Gypsies
more than forty years ago when I was a nipper.
Hancocks have been in business as undertakers in
the London Borough of West Ham since 1885. The
company was started by my granddad, Francis - who
I'm named for - then continued by my dad, Tom, until
I took over when he passed away. Before the Great
War, before those trenches in Flanders swallowed my
soul, I can remember Dad taking me to see the
Gypsies over on Beckton Marshes. A windswept and
lightly populated part of the borough, Beckton
Marshes is half wild and half industry. South of my
home and business in Plaistow, Beckton is where the
gasworks and its labourers' housing are. The wild part
is where Gypsies, among others, ply their various
trades, and other men take their horses for shoeing or
for the exercise the big open spaces allow. I don't
remember when I first went down there, but I do
recall that Dad always took me and we always went to
see a bloke called Nelson Smith. He shod the horses
we've always used to pull at least one of our hearses
and sometimes, when I was very small, he and Dad
would exercise them too. Later on I did this myself
together with Nelson's son, Horatio, the Gyppo who
got me into this with poor Lily, Rosie and the rest of
them up in the forest.
It all started on a Wednesday afternoon just over two
weeks before Lily's bloody end. Although I was tired,
like everyone is these days, I was having a stab at
helping our office girl, Doris, with the books. Ever
since the Luftwaffe started trying to bomb the East
End docks to smithereens, Hancocks, in common with
every other undertaking business east of Piccadilly, has
been working flat out. And although I'm not really one
for paperwork, I could see that Doris was getting into a
bit of a pickle with it so I lent a hand. We spread out
the big ledgers across my desk at the front of the shop,
ready - as Doris is accustomed to doing - to put them
away again should customers arrive.
Doris's brow was furrowed with concentration when
she said, 'Wally Couch's son still owes for his old man's
coffin, Mr H. Buried him almost a month ago.'
'I know,' I said, and offered her a Woodbine.
'Thank you, Mr H,' she said, as she took a fag from
my packet and lit it. 'It ain't peanuts, the price of a
coffin,' she added.
'Yes, but Reg Couch, well, he's--'
'Yes, yes, I know he's a meshuggeneh, Mr H. But you
ain't a rich man. You can't just go giving out coffins to
whoever and whatever--'
'Yes! Yes.' I held up a hand to stop her. Doris Rosen
is a good sort. A nice Jewish girl from Spitalfields, who
really cares about our business, and about me and my
family too. But, like a lot of people, she doesn't and
cannot understand the meshuggeneh, the madman,
that is so big a part of Francis Hancock. The me who
was little more than a boy when he joined the army to
fight for King and empire in 1914 is not the same man
who came back home with his soul cracked in two. I
never cried myself to sleep before the Great War, I ate
like a normal person, screamed only when I was
shocked and ran for nothing but the bus. Now I run
screaming from Hitler's nightly raids on our poor
manor with things I can't even name gibbering and
jabbering in my ever-wakeful head. Reg Couch was in
the first lot too. But, unlike me, he has no business no
work at all, most of the time. He really is barmy,
very much a meshuggeneh, which was why I had no
intention of charging him what I knew he couldn't
afford. Not that I could tell Doris that. 'I'll take care of
Reg,' I said, as I lit a fag for myself. 'Don't you worry
about him, Doris.'
The bell over the front door rang and we both
looked up to see a dark, thin man with a big moustache
holding on to his cap in the doorway. He seemed
embarrassed but I knew from experience that this was
just the awkwardness that so many Gypsies experience
when they move in gaujo society.
'Horatio,' I said. I walked forward to offer him a
chair. 'I hope you being here doesn't mean a loss of
some sort...'
'Rosie Lee has finally gone,' Horatio replied, as If I should have known both who she was and some of the
circumstances surrounding her passing.
Doris put the ledgers on the floor while I said, 'I'm
very sorry for your loss, Horatio.'
'Died sudden, Mr Hancock,' the Gypsy said,
without any obvious emotion, 'so nothing was done
proper. It's why we need you. We'll pay.'
I heard Doris mutter words to the effect of 'You'd
better!' under her breath, which I hoped Horatio
hadn't caught. People can have strong opinions about
Gypsies, especially when it comes to money.
I tried to lead Horatio to a chair but he wouldn't
accept it. 'If you'll do it, Mr Hancock, we'll have to go
now,' he said. 'And you'll need to bring a woman.'

8
I sat down and said, 'Now, look, Horatio, what's all
this about? Was this Rosie a relative of yours?'
'Yes.'
'So...'
'She died before we could wash and dress her, Mr
Hancock,' he said. 'Now she's gone, it's too late. No
Romany can touch her. One of your kind, a gaujo, must
do it. But because you're a man you'll need a woman gaujo with you too. It's our way. Them who've passed
can be dangerous and need respect. And Rosie's mum
is foreign and they're much more careful about
tradition than us English men.'
'I see.' Most real English people consider the
Gypsies foreign, wherever they were born, so Horatio's
way of speaking about the bereaved mother might
have been seen as a little strange. But I'm used to him
and the way he speaks, so I accepted that this woman,
though yet a Gypsy, might come from somewhere I did
not understand. 'So where--'
'They have their 'atchin 'tan up by Eagle Pond,' he
said. 'The Lees been stopping there in winter many
long years.'
'Christ Almighty, that's in the forest!' I said. 'Miles
away! Couldn't you have got a firm from Walthamstow
or Leyton out to do it?'
'But we want you, Mr Hancock,' Horatio said calmly. 'Me and my family've known you and yours for a long
time. The washing and the dressing has to be done by
a gaujo we can trust. Then you must bring her here
until the funeral.'
It was, of course, a compliment, even if getting up to
Eagle Pond, which is on the edge of Epping Forest
between Leyton and Wanstead, is no mean feat. Five
miles if it's an inch, and with wrecked buildings,
unexploded bombs and the possibility of daylight raids
always on the cards, going so far out of my manor away
from London and into Essex - wasn't something
I really wanted to do. But on the other hand Horatio
had shod and exercised my horses for years. He'd never
overcharged me and he'd always done a good job. On
top of that, now that we had the motor hearse, it wasn't
as difficult to get about as it had been with just the
horse-drawn carriage.
'Well, seeing as it's you, Horatio,' I said. 'But as for
a woman to help me, both my sisters are out at the
moment.' Not that either my older sister Nancy or
Agnes, the younger one, is accustomed to helping out
regularly with the washing and dressing of our bodies.
Our apprentice boy Arthur generally does that with
me.
'What about her?' Horatio said, pointing straight at
Doris.
'Ah, well
'Don't matter that she's a Jew,' he said airily. 'Gauje is gauje. Romanies don't pay no mind to religion.'
Epping Forest, and that area of empty country just
south of it called Wanstead Flats, has always been
somewhere for Gypsies, travelling shows and the like
to pitch their camps. Dad used to take us kids and our
mum over that way years ago - sometimes we'd even
go along with Nelson Smith, Horatio and his brother
George Gordon. Our dad enjoyed the horse-riding
stunts some of the Gypsies used to do, while Mum
liked to buy baskets and be among women who looked
as she did and still does. My mother - the Duchess, my
sisters and I call her, on account of her very proper way
of going on - comes originally from Calcutta in India.
Dad was a soldier out.there for many years until he
came home with his very dark wife and little baby girl
to help old Francis with the business. That Mum,
despite being a 'wog', was a good Catholic like the rest
of the Hancock family helped, but my grandmother
never accepted her. Granny H, as we all called my dad's
mum, only ever took to fair-skinned, blue-eyed Agnes.
Mum, Nancy and I were never really in the running for
Granny H's affections. Not that Agnes, or Aggie as she's
called at home, and I ever suffered much in any other
event. But people other than Granny H could be
unkind about the Duchess and Nancy. Their darkness
has always stood them apart, except among the
Gypsies. Up in the forest the Duchess could pass
between the travelling folk without comment. 'Of
course, the Gypsies came from India long, long ago,'
my mother would say, as she smiled at the unsmiling
women around her. 'Their tribe is quite different from
the rest of us, but India is where their journey began.'
I told Doris about this as I drove her and Horatio up
through Leytonstone. Moving away, as we were, from
the Germans' prime target, the docks, both Doris and I
became almost painfully aware of how much lighter the
bombing had been in these areas. Most of those
Victorian 'villas', as they're called in Leyton and Forest
Gate, were just as they always had been. They were
and remain very smart. Down our way, the poor end,
we were getting a lot more than our fair share.
'Your mum ain't no Gyppo,' a scandalised Doris
responded, as I parked the Lancia on the side of the
Snaresbrook Road in front of Eagle Pond. 'She's a lady.'
I smiled. In spite of her agreement to come along
and help me with this deceased Gypsy woman, Doris
remained highly suspicious of those we'd come to
assist. According to Doris and, she said, her husband
Alfie too, Gypsies were 'tea-leaves' and 'bandits'. 'If it
wasn't for you, Mr H, and that Gyppo being your mate,'
she said, as she tipped her head towards Horatio, 'you
wouldn't see me here for dust.'
In spite of being a rural-looking, wooded clearing on
the edge of our tightly crowded London, 'here' was a
poorer place even than we'd just come from. Not all
Gypsies have those colourful covered wagons for which
they are rightly famous. Some, like this group, use carts
to move from place to place. They live in tents and in
an English October that's a bleak prospect. As we
followed Horatio into their camp, those familiar suspicious dark eyes bored into me yet again. However,
unlike my encounters with Gypsies in the past, this
time was not characterised by any movement or offers
of entertainment. They all, men and women, sat
around their smoky wood fires crying and, in some
cases, raking their fingers down their long, grief
stricken faces until they bled. On the outskirts of the
group other people, obviously not Gypsies, watched
the scene, baffled.
'Christ!' Doris said, as she moved in front of a
woman whose face was wet with blood and tears and
whose tattered clothes reeked of smoke, damp and leaf
mould.
'Romanies can't do nothing until the body is buried,'
Horatio explained, as he headed towards a particularly
small and mean black canvas tent. 'No eating, washing,
drink just tea and wine and smoke baccy.'
'So you all do nothing?' I asked, anxious, I must
confess, to learn how they could manage like this.
'Yes.'
'But how do you--'
'We pay the gauje to do most of it,' Horatio said. 'And
those not of the family, we boil the kettles for the
drinks, make the arrangements, get baccy.'
'We? But you said you're family to this girl, Horatio.'
'I'm family in as much as all Romanies is family,' he
replied. 'I can do things. I can get you ...' he pulled
the front flap of the tiny, filthy tent to one side
revealing the blood-soaked body of a girl and a familiar
clergyman '... and the vicar. Important - man in touch
with God should be first to see the dead one. It can
calm the mulo, the spirit, what can be wild with anger.'
On seeing the state of the corpse, Doris turned
aside. The clergyman smiled. 'Hello, Frank.'
'Reverend.'
He came out of the tent, straightened, and we shook
hands warmly. Ernie Sutton, Anglican priest of St
Andrews, Plaistow, had been an early playmate of
mine. Many was the time we'd swung together on
ropes around lamp-posts as nippers. As the tent flap
flopped down after him, Ernie took me to one side
and said softly, 'Rosie Lee, the deceased, died of
cancer. At my insistence that chap Horatio got a doctor
up here, a fellow called Wright from Leyton. But it's
all quite straightforward.' He sighed. 'The girl died
naturally ... if, of course, you can call death natural at
her age.'
'How old is she?' I asked.
Ernie shrugged. 'Sixteen, twenty at the most. And
before you say anything else, Frank, she was married,
in common with most Gypsy girls, and that is her
husband over there.'
I looked towards the pond where a tall young man
stood sobbing into the wind. At his feet stood a small,
perplexed blond child.
'It doesn't help that half of Canning Town happens
to be camping out here at the moment,' Ernie said.
'Gawping away. You'd've thought they'd seen enough
misery, wouldn't you?'
Canning Town is one of those manors that abut
directly on to the Royal Docks - the Victoria, the
Albert and the George. With Silvertown, Custom
House and North Woolwich, Canning Town supplies
most of the manpower for the docks as well as for
Beckton gasworks, the Tate & Lyle sugar factory and
lots of other industries beside the Thames. It's been
blasted to bits ever since the raids started in
September. The bombed-out can be billeted
elsewhere, but to go through all the official processes
takes time and a lot of families have ended up in tents
out in the forest. In that way, so they say, they can have
some control over what happens to them and their
nippers. If they let the authorities take care of them,
more often than not the poor sods are given billets in
the same area they came from, which means they'll
suffer raids every night again and have to go down into
tiny damp air-raid shelters. Just thinking about it
makes me sweat. If I was bombed out I might very well
come out to the forest or the Flats. The police can say
what they like about how gangsters and other
unsavoury types do their business alongside the decent
folk among the trees these days - but in the forest a
person is out in the open.
'Anyway, Frank, are you and Mrs Rosen ...' Ernie
smiled briefly at Doris '... going to make a start?'
'Er...'
'I can bury her on Thursday, if that's all right with
you,' he continued. 'The Almighty and Jerry willing, I
can do two o'clock in the afternoon.'
I was about to say I'd check my appointments when I
got back to the shop but Doris, who knows everything
about Hancocks, said that I could do that date and time,
so we agreed it with Ernie, and with Horatio when he
came over to see what we were about. Rosie's family, he
said, would be content with that.

Once Ernie had gone and Horatio had finished boiling
a pan of water for us, Doris and I set to work on Rosie
Lee. Someone, probably her husband, had put another
set of clothes, which had obviously been the deceased's
Sunday best, beside the body in the tent.
'Poor little thing,' Doris said, as she walked ginger!
around the body, settling eventually at its head. 'Al
that blood!'
'Mr Sutton said she died of cancer.' I gazed at the
young, if strained, face of the corpse before us - still
not visibly at peace: great clots of blood lay like pieces
of liver between her thighs. I've seen such poor women
before. When cancer gets into a woman's womb it's a
terrible, painful, bloody death. 'Come on, let's get her
washed as soon as we can.'
Doris, who had never washed, dressed or even
touched a dead body before, stuck out a hand for a
cloth and said, 'I'll wipe her face.'
I let her do what she felt able to while I concentrated
on the rest. After all, the Gypsies couldn't see us and I
couldn't in all conscience put Doris through a full-scale
washing of a corpse this bad. Cancer rots from the
inside out, so little Rosie was far from wholesome. In a
way, I suppose, I was deceiving the bereaved who, I
knew, expected Doris to do most of the work, but I
didn't feel bad about it, given the circumstances. In
this job you have to treat every corpse and every
bereaved family differently - give them what they
want, and do what's best at the same time, if you can.
If you can't, you just have to do whatever's possible.
After Doris and I had done as much as we could with
the water we had, I went outside with the bowl to get
some more from Horatio. He was squatting by one of
the fires in the middle of the camp, watching the water
pot suspended above it with rapt concentration. As I
moved towards him I saw that a few of the non-Gypsy
gawpers Ernie had pointed out had started to move
beyond the edges of the travellers' camp. The Gypsies
seemed not to notice but I did, so I went over.
'What do you want?' I asked a particularly large old
bloke with anchors tattooed on his forearms.
He frowned. 'What you doin' here?' he said. 'Ain't
you that undertaker from up Plaistow?'
People sometimes say the East End is like a
collection of villages. There's truth in that, especially if
you're bonkers and Anglo-Indian as I am. Even those
who've never used our business know about Hancocks.
I'm the village idiot.
'Yes,' I said. 'I'm here to remove a body from the
camp. I think these people want to be left alone to
grieve.'
'There's coppers about,' the man said, ignoring me
and moving ever more forwards. 'Military, asking
questions, going through things.'
In my experience, Military Police, rather than
ordinary coppers, could mean only one thing. 'They
must be hunting down deserters,' I said, my blood
freezing. Back in my war, the Great War, deserters had
been shot. I have done it myself. I have stood in a line
with other soldiers and shot at boys who only did what
the rest of us wanted to do. I can still see myself doing
it sometimes, at night, in the dark. It's not only the
bombs I run from when the raids get going. My brain is
much more dangerous than any Luftwaffe pilot.
'I don't trust no coppers, military or whatever,' he
said, as he thrust one meaty hand into his jacket pocket
and brought out a pipe. 'I don't want to answer no
questions off of no one. I'll wait here until they've
gone.'
'I've just told you these people are--'
'I won't make no bother for the Gyppos,' he said, as
he lowered himself to the ground beside Horatio. 'I
ain't got nothing against them.'
The Gypsy looked at me and nodded, then refilled
my bucket from his pot. Not speaking to coppers of
whatever kidney is something that East-Enders and
Gypsies have in common. Although unspoken, it had
been agreed that the man and whoever was with him
could stay. It was the start of an association between
the Gypsies and the bombed-out that was to have a big
impact on all of us in the weeks to come.
When I went back into the tent, Doris said, 'So, what
happens between now and the funeral, Mr H?'
'Once we've got Rosie cleaned up I'm going to put
her in that nightgown over there,' I said, pointing to a
threadbare white garment that lay on the ground.
'We'll transport her in that.'
'We not putting her in her best things, then?'
I lowered my voice. 'I can't clean her up properly
here, Doris. If we put her in a nightdress now, we can
take her Sunday best with us and I can put her in it
back at the shop.'
'Yes, but won't they--'
'I'll bring the shell in here in a moment and we'll put
Rosie and the clothes inside,' I said.
'Well, Mr H, if you think that's kosher ...'
A few minutes later I left the camp with Horatio and
went back to the hearse. We took the shell, a flimsy
makeshift coffin we use until the right 'box' has been
made, into the camp and through the flap of Rosie and
her husband's tent. As we passed, carrying the emblem
of mortality, all of the Gypsies wailed loudly and the
tearing of clothes and faces increased. This group, I
noticed, were a mainly short and very dark bunch.
There were a few blonds among them - there generally
are in a big group - but not many. Few of these had
ever bred with the gaujo.
Getting Rosie into the shell wasn't difficult even if I
only had Doris instead of my usual assistants, Walter
and Arthur. The poor girl had been so eaten by the
cancer there was nothing much left of her. Whether
Doris would be able to carry one end of the shell and
help me back to the hearse remained to be seen,
though. Now that Rosie was inside it, I realised that not
even Horatio could help me. However, his new-found gaujo friend with the tattoos was glad to lend a hand
and we moved back towards the vehicle with a small
woman in tow, her face a mess of scratches.
When we drew level with the car, Horatio nodded at
her and said, 'She's Rosie's mother. The dead can't be
alone before they return to the earth. She must sit with
her. In your shop.'
'What? For three days?' I said.
'Yes. She'll not trouble you for food. Just a little tea
sometimes and a cigarette,' Horatio replied. 'She's
foreign but she speaks some English. She can't leave
her daughter now. Not until the funeral.'
How I would wash Rosie properly and put her
clothes on, I didn't know. The little Gypsy woman
climbed into the car with a determined expression on
her heavy-featured face.
Doris turned to me and said, 'So, what now, then, Mr
H?'
Chapter Two



Rosie's mother's name was something queer and
foreign but she said we were to call her Betty.
She reckoned she was about the same age as
my younger sister Aggie. I, at forty-seven, am the
middle in age of my parents' three children. Aggie is
thirty-six and the mother of two nippers, currently
evacuated to Essex. Her husband, a right fly-by-night
in everyone's opinion, went off with another woman a
long time ago. By contrast, Betty Lee still had her
husband who, she said, earned money from the
activities of a dancing bear. The whole group were
show-people - some of them, like Betty, and Rosie's
husband, Edward, had come originally from Rumania,
or so Betty said. There were fortune-tellers, dancers,
magicians and basket weavers. All eight of Betty's
remaining children were involved in one way or
another.
'My eldest girl, Lily, she has the Head,' Betty said to
the Duchess one morning, when the latter brought her
some tea.
'The head?' my mother enquired.
It was two days since I'd brought Rosie and her
mother back to the shop with me. Since Betty wouldn't
leave her daughter even when a raid was on, I'd had to
tell her I wasn't finished with Rosie. But she
understood and she let Aggie and me wash and dress
her daughter, and even watched when the Duchess
gently brushed out the girl's long black hair. Betty had
deemed the result 'beautiful'. She gazed at the corpse
from across our little storage room.
'It's a great marvel,' Betty said, her dull eyes seeming
to give the lie to such an extravagant statement. 'It
talks, opens its eyes. When Rosie is in the earth you
must come and see this great attraction;'
And then the wailing, which the Duchess had grown
accustomed to, began again so she and I left Betty
alone.
'Betty reminds me of the mourners I used to see at
Hindu funerals,' my mother said, as we climbed the
stairs up to our family's flat. 'Christians are so
restrained by comparison.'
She wasn't and isn't wrong there - although
'restraint' isn't a word I'd have used about any of the
funerals I organised, with the exception of paupers',
until this last year. By that I don't mean that there was
a lot of emotion before this war began. That's not the
English way. But there was always a show. There were
horses draped in black crepe pulling the hearse, and
mutes carrying huge ostrich-feather wands. Everyone
attending was in full mourning and the memorial to the
deceased was the biggest the family could afford. Not
that many families could afford much, but they'd
scrimp and pawn and beg for a funeral. This is a poor
borough where generations of men and women have
worked themselves to death. For years a slap-up
funeral has been the one way that broken-backed
dockers and women used up in childbirth can have
their brief moment of glory. Now, thanks to Mr Hitler
and his mates, that's changed. With most of the women
out at work as well as the men, there's money for all
these things but no time. You have to bury the dead
quickly in case of a raid. There are no mutes, few
horses and even fewer flowers. There seem to be a lot
more tears, though. But when you've seen your old dad
or your sister or your best friend blown to pieces in
front of you it changes things - and people. I know.
When the Duchess, who has very bad arthritis, and I
finally made it to the top of the stairs, we went into the
kitchen and had our tea with my older sister Nancy.
Nancy, or Nan as we call her, is a spinster. Bitter,
because she feels the darkness of her skin has put the
kibosh on anyone being interested in her for marriage,
she spends most of her time looking after the Duchess
and saying the rosary.
'How's that.. .' Nan couldn't think what to call
Betty '... Gyppo?'
'Tired,' the Duchess replied, as she sat down and
picked up her cup. 'Keeping vigil is wearisome.'
'I don't know why,' Nan said, as she watched me roll,
then light a fag. 'Ain't like she's praying or nothing, is
it? Them type don't have no religion.'
'Ernie Sutton's burying the daughter up at the
East London,' I put in, by way of information to
my sister.
'Oh.'
Of course, being buried an Anglican wasn't and
couldn't be as 'good' as if the ceremony had been
Catholic but it gave Nan pause, which was no bad
thing. At that moment Aggie came bustling in, all
perfume and blonde hair rolled up into a great big
sausage at the back of her head.
'Can I have one of your fags, please, Frank?' she
said, as she lifted my tobacco tin off the table in front
of me.
'Well...'
'Ta.' She laughed. Although her hair is dyed, Aggie
has bright blue eyes and baby-fair skin. She works with
a gang of other 'girls' down at Tate & Lyle's sugar
factory in Silvertown. Although I knew she was about
the same age as Betty Lee, Aggie and the Gypsy
couldn't have been more different. For a start Aggie
looked ten years younger. Nan, watching her sister roll
a cigarette, sniffed ostentatiously. Aggie, who has
always taken the view that it is better to attack than be
attacked, said to her, 'I like smoking. Mind your own
beeswax.'
'Agnes ...'
'Well, she's always looking,' Aggie said to the
Duchess, with a shrug. 'Everything I do she looks at!
When I smoke, when I get myself ready to go out for a
drink...'
'You haven't been to Mass.'
'No, I haven't,' Aggie said to Nan. 'I don't believe in
it. And, anyway, Frank don't go either. My church is
called the Green Gate,' she continued, naming a local
pub I knew she went to. 'Like it or lump it.'
She poured herself a cup of tea and sat down next to
me to drink it. A rare silence descended on the
Hancock table, only broken by the Duchess, who said,
'Agnes, you have probably been to more music halls
and fairs in recent times than the rest of us.' Nan
snorted but we all, even Aggie, ignored her. 'Have you
ever heard of an attraction called the Head?'
Aggie frowned. 'The Head? No. What--'
'Betty says it's a great marvel. Her eldest daughter
has it. She has invited me to go and see it one day.'
'The Head
'Yes. I imagine it is a head on its own, as if separated
from its body .. .'
'Oh, it's the Egyptian Head you mean,' Aggie said. 'I
saw it at a magic show on the pier at Brighton before
the war. My old man took me.' She looked down
quickly at the floor, then up again almost immediately,
smiling.
'So?'
'It's a head of a girl, if I remember rightly, in a box on a table. Opens its eyes and speaks.' Aggie shuddered at
the memory. 'Creepy.'
I've always been interested in how tricks and
illusions are done. My earliest experiences of magicians
took place in Epping Forest where I watched turns
performed by Gypsies and travellers. When I got older
I watched magicians at the music halls and the odd endof-the-pier
show or on beanos out to Southend or
Brighton. I've seen girls sawn in half, men and animals
seemingly disappear and even a very good levitation
act. But I'd never, at that point, seen a disembodied
head. I admit I was intrigued. I've always thought that I
should be able to work out how such tricks are done,
but I've always lacked either the time or, since the
Great War, the will to do so. After all, when you've
already gone mad, as we all did in the end out on the
Somme, who are you to decide what's real and what
isn't?
'You know Betty won't come down the Anderson,'
Nan said to me, in that sudden, sharp way of hers.
'Eh?'
'The raid, last night,' She gave an exasperated sigh.
'She wouldn't come down the shelter with us. Just sat
there with her daughter, wailing.'
'It's their way,' I responded simply.
And I knew anyway. As soon as the sirens went I
made myself go and check to see what Betty Lee
might want to do. The Duchess and the girls were
already down the Anderson shelter in the backyard
and I invited the Gypsy to join them. But she
declined. 'I cannot leave Rosie,' she said, so I made
ready to go outside as I usually do. I can't be anywhere
enclosed during a raid. I have to be out, running as a
rule. Running from bombs and fire and my own
memories of being enclosed, in a trench, in the last lot,
unable to escape the terror of being buried alive.
Because blokes did get buried alive back then. I've
seen men and their horses sink and choke to death in
the mud of northern France and Belgium. Just
disappeared they did, into shell-holes the size of
churches.
'Well, when you get a chance, ask Betty what my
fortune might be, won't you, Frank?' Aggie said, as she
put her empty cup back on the table and stood up.
'Find out if she can see a new pair of stockings
anywhere on the horizon. I'm off to work now.'
I watched her go with a smile on my face. A lot of
people, Nan included, think that Aggie is flash and
cheap, but she's a bright girl and, what's more
important, she has great heart. With her old man long
gone off with another woman, her two kids in Essex
and a job in the sugar factory next door to the Nazis'
main target, the docks, she'd have every right to be a
bit grim. But Aggie takes what Mr Churchill says very
seriously and she keeps her chin well up. 'That Hitler
can think again if he reckons he's going to stop me
going down the pub,' she said, when the Duchess once
suggested that perhaps going out in the evening wasn't
always a good idea.
Later on that day, in the early afternoon, Ernie
Sutton came to visit Betty Lee to talk to her about her
daughter's funeral. They were not together for long,
and at the end of it he told me, 'She just wants that girl
in the ground now. I don't think she understands or
cares too much how we do that.'
But, then, as Horatio had told me from the outset,
Gypsies, or Romanies as he likes to call his people,
don't have too much to do with religion. It makes what
happened shortly afterwards all the more barmy and
just downright strange.

I don't always go to wakes. I'm not always invited. But
this time I was and I went. What had happened in the
church had been what I'm used to in a funeral.
However, behaviour at the graveside had been wild
and this wake, I felt, in a Gypsy camp away from
religion, was going to be even more different still. I
wasn't wrong. As we entered the encampment I saw a
young boy set light to a large pile of women's clothes on
the outskirts of the area.
'All the things of the dead must be destroyed,'
Horatio explained, when he saw me looking puzzled at
the scene. 'If you don't then marime will hang about.'
I frowned. My apprentice lad Arthur, who'd also
decided to come to the wake, said, 'What's that?'
'Marime is bad things,' Horatio said. 'From the grave.
Even speaking the name of the dead is bad.' And then
he went off to greet his brother, George Gordon, who
was standing in the midst of a gaggle of black-clad old
crones.
In reply to the confusion on Arthur's young red face
I said, 'He probably means bad spirits.'
'What? Like mediums and that?'
I didn't know. But Arthur was puzzled and obviously
bothered, so I said, 'Yes, just like mediums and that.'
Some of the food and drink for the wake had been
prepared for the Gypsies by the family of the large
bloke with the anchor tattoos on his arms I'd met on
the day that Rosie died. He was called, I discovered,
Sidney Clarke or 'Nobby', which he preferred. For
such a rough-looking sort he seemed to have a good
heart. 'My missus and a couple of the other women
from our manor done part of the spread,' he said, as he
stood with me gazing down at the food laid out on
sheets on the ground. 'Gyppos or not, they lost their
girl and that ain't good.'
Later he told me about the brother and father he'd
lost when his parents' house in Silvertown took a direct
hit. No wonder he and his wife couldn't bring themselves
to go back to the docklands. It's natural to want
to be away from so much death. Maybe, I thought, the
Gypsies had it about right when they wiped out the
names and things of the dead.
Travelling people generally sit on the ground when
they eat, especially when it's a big do involving the
whole lot of them. In fact, even non-Gypsies like
Nobby sat once the beer came out, so I, too, got down
on the grass that was, as grass is in October, none too
dry. As funeral spreads tend to be now, it wasn't elaborate but there was Spam, pickled onions, bread
cut into sandwiches with potted meat, and some sort of
cake that I didn't touch. Ever since the rationing
business began things like cake have contained some
strange ingredients. I hear Nan talking about grating
up carrots and parsnips and shoving in lentils, so I tend
to give cakes a wide berth. There was some meat I was
told was hedgehog. This is real Gypsy food from the
countryside. I didn't trouble myself with that either.
But the weather wasn't bad for the time of year, so I
supped my beer and looked around at the Gypsies'
small village of tents and carts and at their big,
contented horses. The scene recalled many happier
times for me, and I was wondering idly where Mr Lee's
dancing bear and other attractions, the Head included,
might be when my eye was caught by the deceased's
beautiful sister. Lily Lee was small, curvy, and, dressed
from head to foot in black, looked exotic and
mysterious. Not that those features alone single out a
Gypsy girl. Lily Lee, though, had something else
besides, a sort of delicate dreaminess to her eyes. It was
something that made her beautiful rather than just
pretty. She sat at the far end of the spread with her
parents, her brothers, and sisters, and Rosie's loudly
weeping husband.
There wasn't, or didn't seem to be, any organisation,
so people just tucked in as and when. Arthur and I sat
with other gauje, like Nobby Clarke, and talk was, as
ever, of the war.
'Them military coppers been all over this forest like
a rash,' Nobby told me, as he sank his third glass of
stout. 'They've got a whole list of men they want to get
their hands on - spivs and gangsters a lot of 'em, but
also deserters, poor sods, and a couple of foreigners too,' he said, with a knowing tap of his nose.
Foreign spies - those creatures we have to avoid
careless talk for. Nobby, I felt, had a quite different
attitude to foreign spies than he did to deserters. It was
one with which I was in accord. Spies are dangerous
and need to be stopped but frightened boys should be
left in the forest until this horror is over and done with.
That's what I believe.
We all tucked in and then, after a while, George
Gordon rose and went to what had been Rosie's tent.
Alone, he took out plates, cups, pictures and jewellery,
which he proceeded to smash in front of everyone. I
imagined it was all part of the process Horatio had
told me about - getting rid of the deceased's goods for
fear of bad spirits. Rosie's father sat like an oak while
this went on.' Her mother and husband screamed.
Again, just as it had been at the graveside when many
of the mourners had thrown coins down on to the
coffin while tearing at their chests and faces, it was
raw and distressing. Rosie's brothers joined in too,
beating the ground with fists still wrapped around
cigarettes, saving words only some of which I could
understand.
'They're a lively lot, aren't they?' I heard Nobby's
missus say to Arthur. Not that I caught what Arthur
might have replied because it was at this point that Lily
screamed and sprang to her feet. Trembling with what
looked like fear, she pointed a dirty finger at a tree.
'She's here!' she said. 'Oh, dordi!'
'Lily!' Rosie's widowed husband shouted. 'Lily!'
For what seemed like an age there was nothing but
silence. No one around me ate, drank or moved. Some
people were later to say that they stopped eating mid
chew, so alarming did the girl appear to all concerned.
I alone, I think, moved to look up at her. Lily's face
wore such an expression of terror that it was almost
painful to see. 'She's here!' I heard her say again, then
something else in another language. Many of the
Gypsy women hid their faces in their scarves, muttering
until rendered mute by the strangeness of the
situation. All other voices besides Lily's became silent.
'Our Lady,' Lily said, her voice trembling as it
formed the words, 'is here!'
Now no one so much as breathed, or so it seemed.

Much to Nan and the Duchess's disgust, the Church
has not featured in my life to any great extent. Most of
my old mates who were killed out in the trenches died
deaths I still see in my mind, in red and black blood
drenched detail. Only one of my mates survived along
with me and he's left with half a face. Whether that's
any better than having only half a mind like me, I don't
know. But one thing I am sure about is that God didn't
help me get through any of it. That said, I know
religion: I had it drummed into me at a very early age.
I know who 'Our Lady' is.
Rosie's husband was up on his feet now. 'No,' I
heard him murmur. 'No.' He started to run towards
Lily. I watched him and was probably almost as
shocked as he was when he was brought up short by
the actions of a red-headed woman, who had now
thrown her arms around the Gypsy girl's neck. This
woman was gaujo, one of us. Later I found out she was
a neighbour of Nobby Clarke and his missus.
'A vision of the Virgin!' she screamed at all of us
present. 'This girl has had a vision of the Blessed Virgin
Mary! Well, for Gawd's sake, act humble, you lot!'
Still no one spoke or moved.
Lily turned her head towards the woman and began,
'No--'
'Just like at Lourdes,' the woman continued. 'The
Virgin--'
'No!' Lily turned back to the tree. 'No, it's Our
Lady, ours, she's come--'
'To save us from Hitler!' I heard someone else,
another gaujo, say.
Yet again Rosie's husband made to move towards
Lily but this time a glance from the girl prevented him.
He put his head down and just stood, his eyes, almost
alone among that party, averted from the scene
unfolding in front of us. People began moving forward,
slowly at first.
'What's all this, Mr H?' Arthur said, as suddenly
the whole camp erupted into a great nightmare of
Gypsies wailing, women rushing towards Lily trying to
see what she was still so obviously seeing and gaujo men swearing as their beer glasses spilled over the
ground, toppling under the weight of the feet of the
faithful.
If I hadn't been in company with so many others I
could have thought that what was happening was just a
part of my own madness. I sometimes hear, and even
see, things left over from the Great War - a death rattle,
a disembodied leg, a man's scream of agony. But this
wasn't like that. This madness was real.
'It's a sign, is what it is,' a rough woman said. 'A
bleedin' wotsit, you know, a miracle.'
'The war'll end now she's come. You'll see,'
someone else said. I heard the distinctive sound of
hymns being sung by several old women.
I looked at Lily Lee's face over the heads of the
many 'faithful' that had rushed towards her and
thought, I don't know what this is.
It wasn't real, for me it just couldn't be, but it wasn't
not real either. Lily was seeing something. I felt that if
I could only get close enough I would glimpse a
reflection of it in her eyes. I could see, or rather I
sensed, that her people, the Gypsies, were feeling
somewhat the same. There was no joy among their
number, only confusion. Like me, or so I thought, they
only pay lip service to religion. The poor buggers
couldn't understand what was going on. They'd buried
Rosie as an Anglican yet here was her sister coming out
with all this 'Our Lady' Catholic stuff. Ernie Sutton,
though not a Catholic, would have known what to do or
at least what to say, but he'd had to go back to the East
London cemetery to bury a couple of little 'uns from
Upton Park. It was diphtheria, not bombs, as took
them, so Ernie said.
'Well, this is a bit of a bleedin' turn-up,' Nobby
Clarke said to me, as he watched his wife go over to
Lily and gently touch her hair. 'Barmy, if you ask me,
mate. But, then, that's women for you, ain't it?'
'Yes...'
I looked across into the trees and saw that the raised
voices around the camp were beginning to attract
attention. Men in uniform moved towards us with
rapid, military steps.
Chapter Three



I know a lot about desperation in wartime. In the
first lot it mainly afflicted us soldiers. My own
belief is that the human brain just isn't capable
of taking in the level of horror you find on a battlefield
so it sort of switches itself over to a different channel,
like changing the programme on the wireless, as we
used to do before this war began. For some, that
different programme is disappearing into a dream
world but for others, like me, it's running, or rather
trying to run, as far away from that horror as it can.
Some take refuge in their religion. I've fought beside
blokes who could see the Virgin Mary or an angel right
in front of their faces. Not even my mates were
immune. Almost the last thing an old Jewish pal of
mine said to me was that he'd seen a rabbi moving
among the dead in the mud, all robed up and floating
three feet off the ground. My pal, like the people which
were now flocking to Epping Forest to see Lily Lee
and her 'miracle', was convinced that what he had seen
meant something good. He died the next morning and
the Great War dragged on for another two years.
A lot had happened since Rosie's funeral the
previous Thursday. For a start-off, or so it was said, the
Military Police had been obliged to cut down on their
other duties in favour of crowd control. The forest
around Eagle Pond was, apparently, packed out, not
just with the inevitable crop of newspaper reporters
but with thousands of Londoners and lots of other
people from all over. Every one of them wanted the
same thing: some sign from the Virgin Mary that the
end of the bombing was at hand. No one wants to live
with the fear we have - no one. It was a busy day for
me the following Monday when I heard our family
priest, Father Burton, enter the shop.
'Hello, Father,' I heard Doris reply, to the priest's
customary dour greeting. 'Mr Hancock's just about to
go out. He's laying to rest poor old Mrs Ewers - don't
know whether you knew her but--'
'It's not really Mr Hancock I've come to see,' I heard
Father Burton say. 'It's Mrs Hancock and Miss Nancy'
'Oh, well, that's nice,' Doris said. 'The ladies like to
have company, 'specially, yours, I know, Father.'
'Just want to make sure that none of my parishioners
is getting hoodwinked by this nonsense up in Epping
Forest.'
'Oh, the Gypsy with the--'
'The Gypsy no one has been able to wrest from her
filthy tent since her so-called vision last week,' the
priest said stiffly. 'As if a savage like that would be
granted the privilege of miracles! She's not been to see
a priest or a divine of any sort since this all began. It's
most irregular. How can the Bishop make a judgement
about such a thing without talking to the person
involved? Now, or so I hear, the Gypsy camp is awash
with the ignorant and gullible, touching the tree the
girl was staring at and, no doubt, being roundly fleeced
by the Gypsies for doing so!'
'I'll go and tell Mrs Hancock you're here, Father,'
Doris said, as she pushed her way through the black
curtains at the back of the shop and into the place
where we sometimes keep our deceased. Most people,
of course, keep their dear departed at home with
them until the day of the funeral. But sometimes, as
in Rosie Lee's case and with bombing victims too
mangled for their families to bear, that isn't always
possible. So I have, not a nice posh Chapel of Rest like
some more prosperous firms, but something as close as
I can afford to it. I was just reaching over to retrieve
the lid of May Ewers's coffin when Doris went past me
towards the stairs. Knowing how I feel about priests
and suchlike, she mouthed at me, 'Miserable old git,'
and I smiled.
The tiny shrunken woman in the coffin had been, it
was said, a music-hall hall singer in the years before
drink took up her every waking moment. I'd known
her a bit and she was a loud, coarse and funny old girl.
She'd had no family, which was why she was on her
own with me in our room. Just before I put the lid over
her dried-up old mug I leaned in to the coffin and said,
'Tell you what, May, I'll go up to the forest after work
and see what's going on for both of us, shall I? If Father
Burton doesn't like it, it must be quite a carry-on.'
I was intrigued, I admit. Work and family commitments
had meant that I hadn't been able to get far
beyond the shop for some days. But now I had some
time I resolved to go and find out what was going on. I
thought I might also collect some twigs for the fire
while I was at it.
I called out into the yard for Arthur to bring me a
handful of nails.

You see some sights, these days, but nothing had
prepared me for what met my eyes around Eagle Pond.
There were thousands of them, men - some in uniform
and some in civvies - women, children, mostly sitting
when I arrived, in that way they do when they're
sheltering down the Underground. Waiting. The
nippers were playing with their few little toys,
occasionally whining, the women knitting, drinking
tea, the blokes leaning up against the trees, smoking.
It's true that on the Underground fights do sometimes
break out between people, women mainly, over choice
little bits of platform, but when a raid is on it can be
quiet like this.
It was late afternoon when I arrived and I came into
the forest in the same way I'd done on my first visit to
the Gypsy camp with Horatio. This time, however, my
path was quickly blocked by a couple of rough lads I'd
seen briefly at Rosie's wake. Dressed in cut-down
trousers and faded flat caps, neither of them could have
been older than fifteen.
'Who are you?' the taller and younger of the two
asked me, as he sucked nervously on his short clay pipe.
I removed my hat and was about to answer him
when a man I recognised as Rosie and Lily's father
approached. 'It's the undertaker,' he said to the boys,
and then, to me, he added, 'We made full payment for
my girl.'
'Yes,, Mr Lee,' I said, 'of course you did.'
'Then why have you come? You're not a believer in
miracles.'
He was maybe my age, maybe younger, it was
difficult to tell. When a face is as brown and lined as
Mr Lee's, it could be almost any age you care to
mention. All I could see with any degree of. certainty
was the contempt that crossed the deep-set eyes,
which were almost hidden by his battered felt hat, as
he used the word 'miracle'. But, then, he was a Gypsy
and, Lily notwithstanding, I had expected no more
nor less.
'I wanted to see what was happening for myself, Mr
Lee,' I said. 'I've heard so much since I was here last
week.'
'The women do no wrong reading palms and cards
for the gauje,' Lee said, as he gazed across at several
women sitting over by 'Lily's' tree reading the palms of
a group of blonde-haired girls. 'My wife, she even reads
for the soldiers.'
'The Military Policemen?'
He shrugged. 'The soldiers keep the people back
from my daughter.'
'I expect some people would like to touch her,' I said,
remembering what had happened when the 'miracle'
had first occurred. Vague memories of stories about
Lourdes and how the local folk had wanted to touch
Bernadette came into my mind.
'Lily keeps to her tent,' Mr Lee replied. 'She has the
Head for company. Come and have some tea with me,
undertaker.'
I suppose that even those who are completely
convinced about the existence of the 'unseen' can't
believe in everything. But I was still shocked that Mr
Lee should dismiss Lily's 'miracle' while making out
the famous Head to be as real as the grass on the
ground. But then, as I drew nearer to his tent and I saw
the beast that was tethered in front of it, I felt that
maybe it had been the showman talking when Mr Lee
had spoken about the Head.
'This here is Bruno,' the Gypsy said, as he rubbed
the bear's head with a large, rough hand. 'He likes to
dance.'
Down on all fours, as he was now, Bruno didn't look
that big. Brown in colour, he was a bedraggled chap and
where the chain that tethered him to the ground met
the collar at his neck there was a bald patch, which,
though not inflamed, did not look comfortable. As he
stared up at me I had the feeling that the bear didn't
trust me, but why should he? I'm human and humans
make him dance, most probably when he'd rather be
doing something else. Beyond stunt-riding acts, I'm
not a great one for animal turns.
'Bruno comes from the forests where my wife was
born.' Mr Lee invited me to sit down with him outside
his tent and watch the kettle come to the boil over his
fire. We sat in silence, which is something Gypsies do
very well, in my opinion. Only later when the tea was
made were we joined by others, all men, including
Rosie's husband, Edward. Not one of the other men
addressed or even appeared to notice the tall, thin gaujo with the top hat sitting next to Mr Lee. But they put
questions to me, in their own Romany language,
through him. They could all, including Edward, speak
English, but seemed to choose not to. I thought at the
time there might be something in the Gypsies'
traditions about certain individuals not speaking
directly to gauje after funerals. And maybe there is, but
mow no more about that peculiar conversation now
than I did then.
'He asks, why do you think so many people come to
see what only my daughter can see?' Mr Lee said, as he
twitched his head in the direction of a ragged, elderly
man on his left.
'Well, I suppose it's because what Lily sees, or says
she sees, is the Virgin Mary, mother,' I replied.
That was what the papers were reporting and what I
had heard with my own ears. 'What does Lily herself
say about it?'
Mr Lee shrugged and would, I believe, have
remained silent if Lily's brother-in-law had not been
about to speak. Mr Lee cut Edward off mid-breath.
'Lily talks to the Head.'
I knew that since the first 'vision' Lily hadn't been
out of her tent. That was why there were so many
people in the forest: they were waiting for the next
dramatic development. The Duchess, who - sadly
from Father Burton's point of view - was very interested
in what was happening up in the forest, had told
me that at Lourdes Bernadette's Lady had made
several appearances scattered over a few weeks. Those
visions and the later ones in Portugal towards the end
of the Great War involved people being cured of
illnesses and prophecies being made. And, of course,
those were the real reasons why so many people had
dragged themselves up to the forest. I was looking out
now at not just a sea of Catholics but of Protestants,
Jews and probably a few Hindus too. People in
wartime need answers, and if those answers are
miraculous, well...
'The Head, Mr Lee,' I said, 'what--'
'My daughter makes her living from the Head,'
Mr Lee cut in sharply. 'If you've sixpence you can
see it.'
I did, so I put my hand into my waistcoat pocket to
retrieve the coin but was stopped before I could think
of handing it over. 'Not now,' Mr Lee said, with a
frown. 'As I said, my daughter is talking to it, alone.'
Then he, and I, looked across at Lily's tent and the
group around the fire became silent as the daylight
slowly faded into night. Even when the sirens went,
none of them moved. I, of course, sprang to my feet as
if I'd been shot from a gun. Even though I was out in
the open, which is far preferable to being inside the
shelter or the shop, I wasn't yet on the move and I
needed to be. I lifted my hat to take leave of my hosts
but, as I always do at these times, I could only stutter
my apologies. 'I, er, I, m-m-must...'
'Yes, you must run from death,' Mr Lee said, with
what appeared to me an unusual amount of understanding.
'Th-thank you ...'
'We must all run and hide from death,' he continued,
and then he said, 'but you don't have to worry about
that tonight, undertaker. Tonight you will come to no
harm. The bombs will miss you.'
I ran from Mr Lee's fire and the company of the
silent Gypsies and headed towards the path that
snakes around the edge of the pond. The way Mr Lee
had spoken about death led me to think that his own
view of it was possibly as something human beings
could outwit. Death played games that we could win,
if we were careful. I wondered whether it was the
Gypsies' knowledge of this game that gave them their
so-called predictive powers. After all, if you know how
an enemy thinks you're half-way towards defeating
him, or so I've heard.
The first explosions came as I was trotting past what
must have been the last duck left on Eagle Pond. Poor
scrawny object, it didn't know whether to run from the
vast yellow and orange lights in the sky or from me
when I drew level with it. Had I been in my right mind
at that time I would have had the bird, wrung its neck
and taken it home for Sunday dinner. But by that time
I had gone far beyond 1940 and the poor old docks
getting a pasting yet again, well away from the duck and
how nice he might go with a couple of spuds and some
runner beans. The blood from the trenches was
dripping into my brain, the screams of those drowning
in mud throbbing in my ears. I ran and ran until I
couldn't breathe another breath and then I sat down in
the middle of the Snaresbrook Lane and I cried. Christ
Almighty, I remember thinking when dawn finally came, if Lily is waiting for some sort of message from her Lady it had
better be a good one. Atheist I might be but I needed a
miracle just as much as the rest of the poor sods laid out
on their little bits of blanket in the forest - waiting. Mr
Lee had been right, though: I'd not come to any harm
that night. I started to make my way home through the
mist-covered woodland. I had completely forgotten to
collect any twigs.

'You've got to stop buggering off like this, Frank!'
Aggie said, as she pulled me in through the shattered
front door of the shop. 'Look at this mess! The
Duchess is beside herself!'
'Ag'
'We're three women on our own,' my sister continued.
'I know you have your problems, Frank, but we
can't cope. Bomb come down over Balaam Street and
we caught the blast. Look at it!'
It wasn't only the shop: all the windows at the front
of the flat had blown in and the blackout curtains hung
in ribbons, fluttering into the street. Balaam Street is a
fair way from us, coming off the opposite side of the
Barking Road, so the bomb that hit down there must
have been big. I shoved what was left of the shop door
shut with my foot and stared down at my desk, which
was now covered with a thick layer of broken glass.
The Duchess, who stood between the black curtains
at the back of the shop, said, 'You'll have to get Walter
and Arthur to board everything up when they get in.'
Mainly she was exhausted and smelt strongly of friar's
balsam, which she'd been sniffing for some days now in
an attempt to ward off a cough.
'Yes, I know.'
Of course, a lot of businesses had been boarded up
since early September. Compared to some we had been
lucky. But I still didn't like it. Boarded-up businesses
had plucky slogans like 'Still here!' painted over where
their windows had once been; boarded-up businesses
worked in darkness.
'Francis ...' My mother began to cough again.
'Why don't you go back upstairs, Duchess?' I said
hardly able to look her in the face. 'Make a cup of tea.'
'I would if the kitchen were not covered with glass,'
she replied, in a tone that was harsh for her. 'The blast
has shot the glass from the parlour right through to the
kitchen sink.'
I glanced up at her, aware that I had tears in my eyes.
'Mum, you're not well. I'm sorry ...'
'Francis, I have a cold, I am not about to die,' the
Duchess replied.
'Yes, but I should've been here.'
'Blimey, Mr H, what's all this?'
I turned to see Walter Bridges, our occasional pallbearer,
push open what was left of the shop door and
crunch his way across the glass-strewn floor towards
me. He looked around doubtfully, took off his hat and
said, 'You're going to need this boarded up, you know.'
'Yes, Walter,' I said, as I turned away from the strong
smell of beer on the old fellow's breath. Walter isn't as
young or as sober as he might be, but with all the young
men in the forces who can choose their workers? 'A job
for.you and young Arthur, I think.'
'Well, if you have any boards, Mr H, I--'
'This is an undertaker's business, Walter,' I said.
'The one thing we have plenty of is wood.'
'What? Coffins?'
'No!' I've never been able to work out whether
Walter is lazy or stupid or both. 'The off-cuts is what I
mean. Bloody hell, Walter, the carpenter'd skin me if I
boarded my windows up with his coffins.'
Our carpenter is the younger brother of a bloke who
was in the first lot with me. When the Great War
started there were four lads in that family. Only our
carpenter, who was too young to go into the forces,
survived. Now he makes coffins for us and for some of
the other firms round here. He's a good lad, and rather
than throwing away the off-cuts or taking them for
himself, he lets us have them. And if the Duchess
hadn't been so careful with the fire we would have
burnt the lot. While Walter went out the back - to fetch
a load of planks and nails, I hoped - I looked across at
my mother.
'Thrift is a sacred word,' she said, as she smiled at
me. 'Did you bring any twigs back from the forest with
you, son?'
I was about to own up to having become, once again,
a mad, frightened fool when the door opened on a
small group of men wearing the uniform of the Corps
of Military Police. The man at their head - who wore
sergeant's stripes - saluted and took off his helmet. 'Mr
Hancock?' he said, in a voice I've always associated
rather more with commissioned officers.
'Yes,' I said. 'Can I help you, Sergeant?'
'Maybe,' he said. 'Can I have a word?' He was, I
imagined, about twenty-eight, well-built and very
blond. Aggie, who is partial to that type of fellow, was
smiling like a person with tetanus.
" 'Well, as you can see, Sergeant--'
'Williams,' he interrupted. 'Corps of Military Police.'
'Sergeant Williams,' I said, 'we've taken a bit of
damage here so if you want a chat it might be better if
we go out the back to my store-room.'
'That should be all right.'
I was about to ask Aggie to organise some tea for the
sergeant and his blokes when Walter came bustling in
with a bundle of planks in his arms. 'You know you've
got a stiff out there, don't you, Mr H?' he said. 'Some
fat geezer.'
Mr Alexander McCulloch had dedicated his life to
the butchering trade, which meant that he had had
little time for relationships, much less marriage. He'd
also been a mean, unpleasant old sod, which was why
I'd ended up with him rather than his one surviving
relative, his brother. 'Keep him down at your place
until the funeral, will you, Mr Hancock?' Albert
McCulloch had pleaded. 'There'll be an extra ten bob
in it for you.'
I smiled at Sergeant Williams. 'I'll just go and sort it
out round there.'
Calling Aggie to help with the refreshments, I went
outside to tidy Alexander McCulloch away into the
backyard. As I left I heard the sound of Walter
hammering misshapen planks across what had once
been our windows. Soon Hancocks would be trading in
darkness.

Sergeant Williams took the delicate little cup and
saucer, one of the Duchess's best, from Aggie with a
smile.
'Two sugars?' she breathed.
'Thank you,' he said, then waited patiently for my
sister to leave. She took her time until she flashed a
glance inadvertently at me and saw my expression. She
didn't notice that he wasn't showing the slightest
interest in her. He was probably a good ten years,
maybe even more, her junior.
I offered the sergeant a fag, which he declined, then
said, 'So what's all this about, then, Sergeant?'
'I understand, Mr Hancock, that you were at the
wake for the Gypsy girl in Epping Forest when all of
these "miracles" began.'
'Yes, I was,' I said, and proceeded to tell Sergeant
Williams what my involvement had been.
'I wasn't there myself, the day these visions began,'
he said, 'but as you must have noticed the Corps have
been up there in the forest for some time.'
'Yes.'
'There's all sorts up there. Spivs and gangsters on
the run from the law, dodgy types concealing dodgy
goods among the trees. But we're not really in the
forest because of them. We're military and as such
we're concerned with national security and military
matters. Deserters hide in the forest.' I had to make
myself continue to smile at him. 'We're looking for four
at the present time.'
'Are you?'
There must have been an edge or a tone in my voice
that he didn't like because he said, 'Is that a problem?'
I studied the sawdust-covered floor of the storeroom
and said, 'No.'
He paused before he spoke again. 'Good.' And then,
after another pause, during which I lifted my eyes to
his, he said, 'We're also searching for a couple of
foreigners, people we're obliged to intern for the
national good.' He put his hand into the top pocket of
his battledress and pulled out several photographs. I
knew at least part of what was coming next. Doris's
father-in-law, a German Jew, had been interned for six
months at the beginning of the war. It had nearly killed
the poor old bugger.
'This is Heinrich Feldman,' he said, as he handed me
a photograph of an elderly Jewish man. 'And that is his
wife, Eva.'
She was quite a bit younger than him but I'd known
that anyway. Heinrich was a clock-mender and had
done a very nice job for me once on my dad's old
pocket watch.
'They used to live in this area. Had a shop in Upton
Park, so I believe,' the sergeant continued. 'They were
born in Germany so the law must be applied. Do you
know these people, Mr Hancock?'
'No.'
'There's talk, you see, in some quarters, among
those who may call themselves socialists, that because
some of these people are Jews they shouldn't be
subject to internment. But they are Germans, Mr
Hancock, and we believe they are hiding in Epping
Forest.'
'Well, I wish you luck in finding them,' I said, as I
handed the photographs back to the sergeant.
'As you can imagine, what with all that miracle
chaos, we haven't been able to move around quite as
easily as we normally do,' he said. 'And, of course, the
Gypsies aren't exactly helpful. A strange, dark people.'
He stared pointedly at me as he spoke.
'Yes.'
'And talking of Gypsies, here's another reason my
chaps and I are in the forest.' He handed me a small,
indistinct photograph of a dark, rather fierce-looking
young man.
'His name is Martin Stojka,' the sergeant said.
'We've received intelligence that he's in the forest.
He's required to be interned.'
'He's a German?'
'A German Gypsy,' he replied. 'Have you seen either
the Feldmans or this man in or around the Gypsy
encampment at Eagle Pond, Mr Hancock?'
'No.' Of course, I, like most people in West Ham,
knew the Feldmans and wouldn't have told the
authorities where they were even if I'd known. But I
didn't, any more than I knew about this Stojka fellow.
'We've searched the Gypsy encampment, with a
view to finding Stojka, but we've come up with
nothing.'
'Then maybe he's moved on or was never there,'
I said.
'Or maybe the Gypsies are still hiding him somewhere,'
the sergeant replied, as he sipped his tea
slowly. 'The Eagle Pond group are the only Gypsies in
the forest at the moment. They look after their own,
that lot.'
'Don't we all?'
He looked up at me sharply, wondering, I could see
in his face, what someone like me might be. Was I a
very pale black or just a dark white man? It's a look I've
seen many, many times.
'Well, the fact is, Mr Hancock,' he said at length,
'you've been up to the camp a few times and it's said
you know these Gypsies.'
'Well...'
'His Majesty and his armed forces would therefore
be very grateful, Mr Hancock, if you could keep your
eyes and ears open for any unusual people, the
Feldmans and especially Martin Stojka in your future
dealings up in Epping Forest.' He leaned in close to
my face and said, 'They trust you. You buried one of
them, didn't you?'
'Yes,' I said.
'You know the horsemen from Beckton, Horatio and
George Gordon Smith?'
'Yes.' He knew a lot about me, this Military
Policeman. I frowned. 'Why do you want this Martin
Stojka again, Sergeant?'
'Because he's a German,' the sergeant said levelly.
'He's also, it's said, vicious and dangerous. Anyway, all
Germans have to be detained, you know that.'
'Yes, but--'
'Just keep your eyes peeled, Mr Hancock,' he said,
as he put his cup down on one of the coffin stands, then
rose to his feet. 'My lads and I are always about. If you
see or hear anything you should pass it on immediately.
And don't try to do anything yourself, don't be a hero.
Whatever sub-group these people might belong to,
whatever stories may be going around about what
Hitler is doing to them, they are first and foremost
Germans and the enemy. If attacked, they might kill
you.'
I thought about telling him the story of Doris's
father-in-law Herschel Rosen, but thought better of it.
That poor old Herschel had suffered in that awful
camp they'd sent him to wasn't going to impress or
soften this bloke. He was, or rather I thought he was at
the time, one of those who goes beyond patriotism into
something that is an enemy of any sort of
understanding. But I said I'd do as he asked and bade
him goodbye cheerfully enough.
Aggie, who was almost breathless with excitement,
watched him and his men go with a sigh on her now
painted lips. 'What a dish!' She turned to me. 'Oh,
Frank, are you going to be seeing him again?'
'Not if I can help it,' I said, and at the time, I meant
it.
'Oh, you mean git!' Aggie cried.
I walked out into the yard, passing Walter on his way
to the front of the shop with more wood. Arthur, who
had only just arrived, was looking into Alexander
McCulloch's coffin with a frown.
'He out getting a suntan, Mr H?' he said.
'Something like that,' I replied, and then I asked
Arthur for a fag, which he gave me without further ado.
We stood beside the not-so-dear departed, smoking in
silence. Even the back of our building, which had not
been touched by the blast, was filthy and studded with
shards of glass.
Chapter Four

Later that afternoon, once I'd screwed the lid
down on Alexander McCulloch's coffin and my
lads and I had boarded up most of the
windows, I went into the kitchen to get a cup of tea. I
knew that my sisters were out and I had thought that
the Duchess was asleep but then I saw her thin, black
clad figure standing motionless at the kitchen window
and I said, 'Penny for 'em?'
She turned and smiled. She's seventy years old, my
mother, and still beautiful. 'My thoughts? Well,
Francis, I was thinking that someone ought to go down
to Canning Town for some sweets.'
I went over to the kitchen range and lit the gas
underneath the kettle. 'Sweets? You'll be lucky. What
do you want sweets for?'
'I'd like some Victory Vs to soothe this cough,' she
said. 'I would also like some sweets for a journey I
intend to make.'
Like me, the Duchess is tall and thin, so I never
have to look down at her. 'Where are you planning on
going, Duchess?'
'Well, that poor woman who lost her daughter, Betty
Lee, she invited me to see her other daughter's
attraction, the Head. You remember, Francis.'
I did, although I couldn't really see my mother
putting herself out so much as to go all the way to
Epping Forest just to see some side-show.
'Nancy and I have decided to go tomorrow afternoon
and I thought it might be nice for us to have some
barley sugar or something like that for the journey.'
I'd had my suspicions, of course, but now I was
certain. If the Duchess was going up to Epping Forest
with Nancy, she wanted to see the 'miracle'. She
wouldn't go directly against Father Burton's orders, of
course, she'd use the mysterious Head as a cover story
and be perfectly calm about telling the priest so, when
eventually she had to.
'So, if you have time, Francis, I would be obliged if
you could go to Murkoff's for me,' she said. 'Their
sweets are so much better than anyone else's.'
'Duchess,' I said, 'the chances of my finding some
sweets even at Murkoff's--'
'Well, if you don't find them there, then maybe you
won't mind trying elsewhere in Rathbone market,' the
Duchess said, as she turned pointedly away from me.
'You could even see your friend who lives there, Miss
Jacobs, couldn't you? I'm sure she'd be glad of the
company'
Ever since my mother had met my 'friend' Hannah Jacobs, some weeks before this, I'd wondered how
much she'd worked out. Aggie, I knew, was fully aware
of what Hannah was and what she meant to me. But
the Duchess? Well, I knew she knew that Hannah was
Jewish, and I suspected she had knowledge of some
amount of 'involvement' on my part. I could be pretty
sure, however, that she didn't know that Hannah was a
prostitute. If she had I do believe that Rathbone
Market and even Murkoff's would have been very
much out of bounds. That she waved me off when I
left, with a smile, was also a strong clue.
'I'll come with you and Nan tomorrow,' I said. 'It's
like a madhouse up round that pond and I've no work
on in the afternoon.'
The Duchess coughed, then smiled again.

'Eva Feldman's parents disappeared, so they say,'
Hannah said, as she pulled her dress over her slip, then
lit a fag. 'She got together with old Heinrich, who
already had a brother over here, in Bethnal Green.
That was three years ago.' She looked down at the floor
sadly. 'Jews can't leave Germany now.'
'Hannah, love, I would never tell the Military Police
or anyone else where the Feldmans might be, even if I
knew,' I said. We both dress very quickly after one of
our 'afternoons' so I was sitting on the bed by this time
with my shirt and everything else done up to my neck.
'I know.' Hannah isn't a pretty woman, she's seen far
too much of life for that, but in spite of her age - forty
seven like me - and the fact that she dyes her lovely
brown hair yellow, she's beautiful. Many years before I
met her, Hannah left her very religious family,
disowned by them, to marry a Gentile boy. But that
didn't work out so she had to make her living any way
she could. At first she was literally on the streets, but
now she lives with a couple of other 'old girls', who
work in the house of an elderly abortionist called Dot
Harris. I am one of Hannah's few regulars. I am also, I
like to think, something more on occasion too.
'Anyway, I got the feeling that the person the
sergeant really wanted was the Gypsy, Stojka,' I said.
'He made him sound dangerous.'
'Like the Feldmans?' Hannah shook her head. 'You
know, the Commies say that the Nazis have been
killing the Gypsies for years. This Stojka has probably
run here for his life.'
'But, as the sergeant said, they're all German,' I said,
unconvinced even as I uttered the words. The
Communists, or Commies as many call them, are
strong in this part of London. Committed to the
betterment of the working classes, a lot of Commies are
Jews and they are, in my experience, very well
informed. Hannah knows a few, and if they were saying
that the Nazis were killing Gypsies I was inclined to
believe them. After all, even if Joe Stalin chooses to
ally himself with Hitler that doesn't mean every
Commie on the planet thinks likewise. Doris's
husband Alfie, for one, thinks that the Soviet leader is
simply playing for time.
'Well, if you don't go up to the forest again for a bit,
you won't have to get involved in none of it, will you?'
Hannah said.
'I've said I'll take my mother and sister up there
tomorrow afternoon,' I replied. And then I added, 'To
see this Gypsy girl having her "vision" hopefully'
'Virgin Mary supposed to be, isn't it?' Hannah said.
'That's certainly what people want it to be and, to be fair, the girl Lily did call whatever it was "Our Lady".
But putting aside for a moment the fact that I can't believe in such things, there's something not right
about it all.'
'What do you mean?'
I picked up a fag I'd rolled earlier and stuck it into
my mouth. 'Well,' I said, 'when some old girl from
Canning Town started jumping around about it being
the Virgin Mary, Lily said, "No".'
'What changed her mind?'
'I don't know whether anything did.' If my memory
served me right, Lily had just stopped saying it wasn't
the Virgin Mary. She had also, I remembered, stopped
her brother-in-law saying something too.
'Maybe it's a swindle,' Hannah said, after a pause.
'You know how dodgy Gypsies can be.'
'I thought you felt sorry for them,' I said, as I lit my
fag.
'I don't think they should be hurt,' Hannah said,
'but I'm connected to the real world too. Gyppos are
dodgy, H. Talking of which, they have paid you for that
girl's funeral, haven't they?'
Exactly like Doris. 'Yes,' I said impatiently - and this
time I was telling the truth.
'Good.' Hannah smiled. 'So, you're off to Eagle
Pond tomorrow, then, are you?'
'Yes.'
She sat down in the small hard chair beside the
range and sighed. 'Well, maybe I'll take a trip out there
meself. Get a bit of country air. Maybe our paths will
cross. I should at least see this thing for meself.'
'Not likely to be much to see,' I said. 'Lily hasn't
had any visions since the first one.'
'A lot of people are living in hope that she does,'
Hannah said. 'I should see what there is to it.'
'Yes, you could come with us ...'
'No.' Nan wouldn't be any too pleased, but the
Duchess, in blissful ignorance of Hannah's calling,
would be charmed. After all, I am forty-seven and I've
never been married, which means that my mother is
willing to consider most women for me now. The
religion, of course, is a stumbling-block, but that isn't
nearly as big a problem as Hannah's low feelings about
herself. I've proposed several times and she's always
refused me. She reckons she isn't good enough to marry
a decent man like myself. What, she wonders, would
she say to my mates and my neighbours if they ask her
what she did before we met? She's also afraid, and with
good reason, that one or other of them might recognise
her. And that is a problem even I must accept. 'No, I'll
pop along in the afternoon and if we meet we meet.'
'OK.'
'Anyway, I might, if I'm lucky, see that military
copper your Aggie was so sweet on,' Hannah said
mischievously. I'd told her about that and we'd
laughed together just before we'd had our little bit of
passion. 'He sounded lovely.'
'Mmm.' I hung my head in the way I am inclined to
do when I'm upset, even though I knew Hannah was
only pulling my leg. Looking the way I do, I sometimes
find big, fair, younger blokes intimidating. They can so
easily look down their noses at a 'wog' like me - and I
can't retaliate. I have nothing to look down my nose at
them for.
Hannah smiled. 'Oh, don't get down in the dumps,
H,' she said. 'I'd rather have you than some bloke who
spends his time out hunting for innocent people to
bang up in some filthy camp. And, anyway, the military
don't do nothing for me. I've been with soldiers, you
know.'
I tried to smile at her but I couldn't. Even the
mention of other men in her life upsets me and she
knows it. Hannah realised she'd gone too far and came
over to kiss me. Then, without another word, she made
me a cup of tea, which I drank in silence. It isn't easy
loving a woman in her line of business.

Lily Lee, it was said the next morning, had left her tent
in the middle of a raid at just after midnight. Dressed
in red she stood in front of 'her' tree and began to talk.
Some said she sobbed a little, too. She was seen first,
before it all went mad, by a small boy called Eric. He
said the Gypsy girl was saying how sorry she was to thin
air, asking it to forgive her if it could.
Of course, Eric's mum, once she discovered that her
boy was missing, got up and went to find him. What
she, a worn-out mother of twelve from Silvertown, saw
was Lily Lee communing with the Virgin Mary in front
of her six-year-old son. Eric, his mother later told the Evening News, was 'holding his hands up like he was
praying'. That woman woke everyone else, screaming,
'She's come back! The Virgin Mary ain't given up on
us!'
Mayhem followed, apparently, the still mourning
Gypsies screaming, over-tired kids running all over the
place, causing mischief, and East-Enders not being at
all like the people who went to see Bernadette at
Lourdes. Nobby Clarke told me about it the next day:'All they wanted to know, kept on asking, was about
the war. You had geezers shouting, "Tell us when the
fucking war's gonna end!" and "Ask God to send us
some fags!" Went raving mad, some of them.'
What was missing from all the accounts of that
second 'vision' was anything about Lily herself. She
didn't, or so it seemed, speak to 'Our Lady' after Eric
had inadvertently blown the whistle on her. But, then,
until Sergeant Williams and his lads arrived to
intervene, she was a bit too busy beating off women
who wanted scraps of her clothing. In the Daily Sketch the following morning, the reporter, who hadn't been
anywhere near the event, described it as 'Outrageous.
Those people who lost control of themselves should be
ashamed.' He went on to talk about how unBritish it all
was and how maybe Mr Churchill would like to put a
stop to it personally. But Mr Churchill, as we all know,
is cleverer than most and that article got no reaction
from Downing Street. After all, whatever else she
might be doing, the Virgin of the Pond, as Lily's experiences
were coming to be known, was giving people
hope. Because as well as the madness that attended the
girl's visions there was also contentment. I saw it for
myself when I took the Duchess and Nan to the pond
the following afternoon.
Chapter Five



Oh, I think that the fact that they're singing, and
hymns too, is quite delightful,' the Duchess
said, as Betty Lee led her and me towards Lily's
tent.
Betty surveyed the massed hordes in the forest with
a rather more jaundiced eye. 'Makes you dinilo all day
and all night long.'
'But everyone looks so happy,' the Duchess
continued. And she wasn't wrong. Everyone we met
had a smile on his or her face. Nan said it was the grace
of the Virgin entering their souls. Although how she
could say that and then refuse to meet the presumed
channel through which Our Lady communicated Lily
Lee - I still don't know. The Head and all the
'mumbo-jumbo', as Nan called it, aside, I would have
thought she'd be curious at the very least. But she
wasn't, so the Duchess and I left her sitting with
another spinster she knows from church, Miss
O'Dowd, and took Betty up on her offer to see Lily's
Head.
Until this point I'd never actually spoken to Lily
Lee. But as I entered the shabby, patched tent, I
removed my hat and said, 'Good afternoon,' to the
stunningly beautiful young woman sitting on the floor
in front of me. With more curly black hair than you
usually see on three average women, Lily Lee was also
far more rounded than most Gypsy girls, who are
generally skinny. But, like the first time I'd seen her, it
was Lily's eyes that held me. Large and dreamy. Very
good eyes indeed for a visionary.
'The undertaker,' Lily responded matter-of-factly.
'And his mother,' Betty said to her daughter, before
slipping out into the open air.
'Sit down,' the girl ordered, and indicated that the Duchess and I should lower ourselves on to a damp, filthy blanket on the floor.
'Miss, my mother has a cold--'
'The Head won't come if you don't sit down,' Lily
said, which, to me, had to mean that the illusion was somehow based on what angle a person viewed it from.
'Oh, well,' the Duchess said, with a smile, 'if we
must sit, we must sit. Help me down, would you,
please, Francis dear?' She took off her small black
pillbox hat and reached up towards me.
I picked her up, then lowered her down at my feet.
She's light as a feather, poor old girl. Not that Lily
watched with anything that appeared to be compassion.
Although lovely, her face also had a hard cast
at times, like her voice, which could be as sweet as it
was throaty. Once I'd settled the Duchess I sat down
beside her and waited for something to happen. There
wasn't much in that tatty old tent - just a pile of rags
that probably constituted Lily's bed, a bowl for
washing, animal bones and fur hanging from the ceiling
and a little table surrounded on three sides by a black
fabric screen.
Lily, who was still wearing the long red dress she'd
been seen in the night before, shuffled over to one side
of the table, just behind the black screen, lit a small
clay pipe and said, 'The Head is very ancient and
knows all things. It speaks many languages, one of
which is English. You mustn't come near or the Head
will disappear, although you can ask it questions. The
Head is a man of our people who was a great magician.
His name is Django.'
And then she called him. 'Django! Django, and There was a light that I can only assume came from
a tear in the top of the tent, which illuminated the
surface of the table. Beyond Lily's pipe, there was no
smoke, nothing to distract a person's attention and no
sound whatsoever. So how the head of a dark,
moustachioed man appeared out of thin air on that
table top I couldn't then imagine. Slowly, slowly, as if
coming skin by skin into being the Head materialised
and blinked its black-rimmed eyes. During this process
I glanced away for the merest second so the thought
about how it might have been done took my breath
away.
'Django.' Finally I saw Lily smile. She said
something else to the Head then in their language and
he replied, I think, 'Va.'
Lily, who was obviously accustomed to chivvying
along dumbstruck gauje from this to the next attraction,
said, 'Ask something of Django. He knows everything.'
I looked at the Duchess, who was, I could see,
without a thought in her head, then cleared my throat
and said, 'Well, good afternoon, Django. It's very nice
to meet you.'
'It is most pleasant to make your acquaintance too,'
the Head responded, in a rather high, sing-song voice
with an accent I couldn't pin down for the life of me.
The moustache, I could now see, was not real but
painted on to his face.
'So, er, how old are you, Django?' I said, feeling a bit
of a fool to be talking to what had to be an illusion in
that darkened, dirty tent.
'I am nearly two thousand years old,' the Head
responded proudly. 'I have seen the Romans rise, fall
and disappear completely.'
'Oh, that's very interesting.'
'I have seen Julius Caesar walking by the Nile river
with Queen Cleopatra.'
'Egypt.'
'Yes,' the Head replied. 'Our people stayed in that
country for a while.'
The Duchess, though religious, is not a stupid
person and I could feel her shaking with some sort of
emotion. The Head was aware of it too. 'You, lady,' it
said, 'I think that you want to ask Django some
question.'
The Duchess coughed, looked at me and then at
Lily before she addressed herself to the Head. 'Well,'
she said, 'I wanted to know, Django, whether you ever
went in your long travels to the land of Palestine.'
'You are a Christian woman, lady?'
'Oh, yes.'
The Head smiled. It was not a pleasant sight. Quite
apart from the situation, which was eerie, Django
seemed ugly, leering and had very blackened teeth,
which, again, I felt at the time had been done to him
with makeup. 'I saw your Christ enter Jerusalem on a
donkey and I saw Him die upon a cross,' the Head said,
with what appeared to be great seriousness.
'Did you? Did you really?'
'Yes.' The makeup around his eyes creased and
melted as he suddenly, unnervingly, smiled again. The
look of it and what he, this actor, and presumably Lily
Lee were doing made me sick. The Duchess is a
sincerely religious woman and what they were feeding
her here wasn't nice.
'You know, lady, it was the Gypsies that made the
nails that crucified your Christ. No one else would do
it. So it is said. So people say.'
'Django,' Lily Lee's face was troubled now and
she'd put her pipe quickly to one side, 'the lady don't
need to know--'
'Everybody thinks there was three nails, to
smash the hands and the feet together, but there
was four.'
Lily Lee grabbed a battered cardboard box, then
said something, in whispers, which sounded very hard,
to the Head. He said something back and then, with
genuine regret on his face, he said to me, 'I am sorry,
sir, for upsetting the lady. But I can see she wants to
know everything about Christ. She is a seeker for the
truth and a person of clean spirit.'
'Yes, well, that's as may be. But that sort of detail is
not nice,' I said, at the exact moment Lily Lee covered
the Head with the cardboard box. For probably no
more than a couple of seconds I heard it pleading and
babbling in its box, and then it went silent.
'The Head is gone,' the girl said, before removing
the box from the table to demonstrate this to us.
'Probably for the best,' I said, then couldn't help
adding, 'Can't have parlour tricks upsetting people's
beliefs, can we?'
Lily dropped her eyes to the ground.
'Well, that was very interesting, my dear,' the
Duchess said to the girl, as I helped her to her feet.
'Who do I pay? Is it you or--'
'You buried my sister,' Lily said to me. 'You can both
go free.'
'Oh, how generous,' the Duchess said, as she made
her way out through the tent flap and into the open air.
'And very interesting too. Francis, I will just stand
outside for a little while ...'
'All right, Duchess,' I said, as I glanced - fiercely, I
imagined - at the Gypsy girl still leaning on the Head's
table.
'It's not a parlour trick,' Lily Lee said to me, once
my mother had gone. 'The Head is real.'
'Oh, in the same way that your "visions" are real?' I
said.
'You were there the first time. You saw me see--'
'I saw you see something, yes,' I said. 'But I don't
think it was the Virgin Mary and neither do you, do
you, Miss Lee?'
'I--'
'I'm not saying that what you're doing here is a bad
thing,' I continued. 'Your visions have made a lot of
people happy, given them hope. But I know you don't
believe it. I heard you deny it was the Virgin with my
own ears. And this Head thing, well--'

'Sssh, the Head will hear you!'
She had real fear in her eyes, but I told her I wasn't
fooled because I believed sincerely that I wasn't.
Smoke and mirrors was what I thought - smugly, I
confess - as I left the tent Lily Lee shared with the
Head. How was I to know there was any more to it than
that?
'Tell your mother to make a tea from coltsfoot for her
cough,' the Gypsy called, once I was in the open air.
"Tis very powerful for a bad chest.'
Nan was having a nice conversation with Miss
O'Dowd, who is quite her equal in the spinsterhood
stakes, when the Duchess and I found her again. I
think it's the bottle-bottom glasses on top of the tiny,
disapproving eyes that disturb me most.
'Have a good time with your Gypsies' magic, did
your' Miss O'Dowd said sourly, as we approached.
The Duchess smiled. 'Very interesting,' she said.
'You know that Lily even offered a cure for my cough?
Coltsfoot, apparently.'
'Father Bowers, who is a friend of Father Burton,
says that all types of magic and country ways come
straight from the devil,' Miss O'Dowd said, in that
limp, almost apologetic way she has.
'Oh, well, must be damned, then,' I couldn't resist
responding.
'Not you, surely,' a sharp, familiar voice said behind
me.
I turned and raised my hat. 'Miss Hannah Jacobs.'
'In the flesh.' She was wearing an old if still stylish
costume in cherry red. The skirt was short, as most
women's tend to be now, and it showed off her legs
really well. Made up to the nines, as she always is when
she goes out, Hannah had piled her hair up at the back
of her head in a big French pleat, and topped it off with
the fan-shaped hat I like so much. She looked a treat.
I heard Nan and the O'Dowd woman sniff disapprovingly
in unison, but I ignored them and instead I
reacquainted Hannah with the Duchess.
'It's very nice to see you, Miss Jacobs,' the Duchess
said, as she took Hannah's hand and shook it between
her own twisted, bony fingers. 'You, like myself, must
be curious about what is happening here in the forest'
'Yes. It's amazing.'
Apart from Nan and Miss O'Dowd, we all chatted
companionably until the Duchess suggested that
perhaps Hannah and I might like to walk around while
she sat with 'the girls'. 'You know that Lily's father has
a dancing bear,' she said to me, as I bent down to bid
her goodbye. 'There's plenty of card-reading and
perhaps Miss Jacobs would like to see the Head.'
'Yes, Duchess. We'll see. Don't get too cold out here,
will you?'
'Francis, please don't fuss,' she said as she waved us
on our way.
I noticed that Hannah had frowned at my mention of
the Head but I rolled my eyes to the sky and indicated
that we should set off quickly while we could.
Once we were out of sight of my family I took one of
Hannah's hands.
'Had your pocket picked yet, have you?' she said.
I smiled. 'No.'
'How much they fleece you for a butcher's at the
dancing bear?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'I haven't seen him - this time. But
I have spoken to Lily Lee.'
'The Gyppo gifted with visions.'
'If you want to put it like that, yes.'
'She's a fake,' Hannah said. 'And?'
I put my hand into my pocket and took out my fags. 'I want to say yes,' I said, 'but not because of the
visions. She just did a dreadful parlour trick for the
Duchess and myself, a head on a table ...'
'Oh, the Egyptian Head. I know the bloke who does
that,' Hannah said dismissively.
'Do you?'
'David Green, calls himself the Wazir of the
Pharaohs. His family lived next door to my auntie
Esther in the Montefiore Buildings on Canon Street
Road. Me and David was quite close as kids. Slimy
thing when he grew up, mind. Been doing the halls
with his magic act for years.'
Magicians are close about the secrets of their trade
so I knew that if I asked, and even though I was a mate
of Hannah's, this Green bloke wouldn't tell me how
the Head trick worked. But I felt I'd like to see another
version of it so that I had something to compare with
what Lily was doing.

'Do you know where David Green is playing at the
moment?' I asked.

'No, but I can find out,' Hannah said. 'He ain't no oil
painting, though, David Green. You have been warned.
Short, fat, bald and sweaty.' She pulled a face. 'Weird,
he is, not in a nice way'

She seemed disturbed, but then she said, 'Not like
you.'

It wasn't easy getting away from the hordes in the
clearing around the pond - there were even people
camped among the trees. But after stepping over whole
families of knitting women, not to mention numberless
dirty-faced kids, we eventually came to a spot where we
could be relatively private. I put my arms around
Hannah and kissed her.

'You know I charge extra for doing it out of doors,
don't you?' she said, once I'd disengaged myself. 'You
get leaves and twigs in your clothes and up your
wotsit.'

I laughed. I hadn't paid Hannah in the accepted
sense for years. I take her out, get her some coal, slip
her the odd coupon when I can, and I've paid her rent
on a couple of occasions when she couldn't. But I never
pay to sleep with her. I give her what I can and I'd do
that whether she slept with me or not. I love her.

'Oh, I don't want to do anything, love,' I said, as I
cleared some grass for us to sit on under an oak tree.
'Just being alone with you is nice.'
Hannah brushed away a few stray leaves before she
sat down, pouting her red lips with distaste. She's a
proper city girl and not too fond of the countryside. But
once we'd sat down and lit our fags, Hannah settled,
and even sighed contentedly when I moved her head
on to my shoulder. I was about to close my eyes for a
few minutes when something caught my attention
further and deeper into the forest. It started as a flash
of red. It might have been anything - a bird, a discarded blanket blowing through the trees - but it
was a person, wearing something red, and as it and the
other less distinct body beside it moved closer, I saw
that the red thing was Lily Lee's dress.
'Leave me be!' I heard her say, followed by the low,
if indistinct, rumble of a man's voice in reply.
'That's the girl who has the visions,' I murmured to
Hannah.
Hannah looked in the direction of the voices, then
turned back to me. 'Who's she with?'
I shook my head. 'I don't know.'
Closer to us now, I heard Lily again: 'I'm saying
nothing because there's nothing to say! I can't help
you, leave me be!'
'Lily!' The voice was loud but it wasn't unpleasant.
'No!'
'Lily, no one's going to get hurt. I promise!'
'No!'
She ran straight past Hannah and me, but she didn't
see us. Her dress was pulled down at the neck and I
looked at Hannah, who returned my gaze knowingly.
'Someone up to something she shouldn't,' she said.
But I wasn't sure. What Lily had said to the man
struck me as more of a refusal to give aid rather than
lack of desire for sexual relations. Not that the man
appeared to follow her. Maybe he knew that Hannah
and I were in the area. Or maybe he didn't want to get
involved in the great mass of people we could now see
swarming towards and around the young woman in red
- hundreds of them, trying to touch her, asking her,
'Has Our Lady told you when it's all going to end?'' or
'Ask Our Lady about our Derek, please - will you, Lily,
darling?'
'Christ, H, this is barmy,' Hannah said.
'Yes,' I agreed. But inside I recognised that I felt
different. Apart from the blokes I knew who claimed to
have seen things in the first lot, I, like millions of old
soldiers, know the story of the Angel of Mons. Quite
what was seen by the British troops in the skies above
that battlefield in 1914 no one can know. Some said it
was an angel, some a whole company of the things;
others had seen St George and there were even blokes
who claimed it was all down to King Arthur and his
Knights of the Round Table. But somehow the Hun
were held back during that battle and thousands of our
lads were spared. Whether it's true or not hardly
matters. The Angel of Mons gave people hope and, if
you discount the enemy soldiers involved, it or they
hadn't hurt anyone. Lily's Lady, Our Lady of the Pond
or whatever people might choose to call her, seemed to
me to be in the same category - or, rather, she was for
the time being. A chill wind was sweeping into Epping
Forest that wasn't entirely due to winter coming on. Its
origin, I felt, was in the uncertainty I'd experienced
when I'd watched Lily having her first vision - the
sense that I didn't know what I was witnessing.
We left the forest at just before five. The light was
beginning to go, and the Duchess and Nan were
anxious not to be caught far away from home if or when
the bombers came over. Neither of them had ever been
inside a public shelter and they didn't plan to do so
now.
'You can't breathe in some of them places for the
smell of, you know, the toilet,' Miss O'Dowd said, to
my scandalised sister, as we all made our way back to
my car. 'And there's women down there no better than
they should be, allowing men all sorts!'
Hannah and I, following the Duchess and the other
two women, gripped each other, laughing silently.
What Miss O'Dowd would have done had she known
about Hannah I didn't dare think about and as for my
sister...
'Oh, blimey, it's a hearse!' I heard Miss O'Dowd say,
as we all turned into the Snaresbrook Road and she
beheld the Lancia.
'Well, you know our Frank's an undertaker, Dolly,'
Nan said, in my defence.
'I can't get in no hearse! I thought you said your
brother had a car!'
'He does. It is a car,' Nan said.
Miss O'Dowd crossed her arms across her chest and
shook her curly red head in disapproval. 'Oh, no, Nan,'
she said. 'I can't get in there. Hearses are for the dear
departed. I'll get the bus.'
'It is getting dark, my dear,' the Duchess said, as she
tapped Miss O'Dowd's arm. 'I don't think we should
leave you here alone.'
'I'll be all right, Mrs Hancock,' Miss O'Dowd
replied, with only a tiny shudder at my mother's
foreign touch. 'I've got me rosary and a St Christopher
for journeys, and with Our Lady so close by, I can't
come to no harm, I don't think.'
'Not bothered that the visions might be part of the
Gypsy magic the priests say come straight from the
devil?' I couldn't resist asking.
Not that Dolly O'Dowd gave me an answer: she
just stuck her nose in the air, told Nan she'd see her
at Mass on Sunday, then headed off up towards the
Eagle pub.
The Duchess shrugged, then turned to Hannah.
'Well, you, I hope, will accept a lift, Miss Jacobs. It is so
cold and damp now. If I recall correctly, you live in
Canning Town, don't you?'
Hannah accepted my mother's offer so I drove back
through Forest Gate, Leyton, through Stratford and
back into the rubble and filth that is now the Royal
Docklands. One other thing I noticed from that drive
was that people get thinner the closer you come to the
river. Further south from Canning Town, right on the
Thames, had to be home to people who were all but
transparent, I thought.

Chapter Six



Stella Hancock is my dad's older brother Percy's
girl. In her early fifties, like our Nan, Stella is a
spinster who, until that terrible night for her in
late October 1940, lived with Uncle Percy in New City
Road, Plaistow. There's a lot of women Stella's age
without husbands or children. Victims, you could say,
of the Great War, although not all of them see
themselves in that light. My cousin Stella is one who
does, her single misery displaying itself as a propensity
to 'nerves'. It didn't take a great stretch of the
imagination to picture what the ARP found when they
dug out the stair cupboard Stella had been hiding in
when the house next door took a direct hit.
'I've never seen nothing like it,' the warden, a local
tailor in his other life, said. 'Stood up with her hands
braced agin the ceiling of the cupboard, hair on end,
pinny in shreds, her gob wide open like a bleedin' cod.'
'There's no sign of anyone else, I suppose?' I asked,
as Doris came into the shop with tea for the warden,
Johnny Webb.
'You mean your Uncle Percy?' The warden shook his
head sadly. 'No, sorry, Mr H. Just your Stella, I'm
afraid. Barmy as a coot too, which is why she's down the
cop shop.'
I waited for Doris to go before I asked, 'But why
didn't they bring her here? The police know our
family'
'Coppers only managed to stop her screaming half an
hour ago.' Johnny moved his head close to mine.
'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 worn down and haggard now. First I smiled at
the little young nurse beside her, then took one of my
cousin's hands and said, 'Hello, Stel, you've been in
the wars a bit, haven't you, love?'
She looked through rather than at me, so I went on,
'Stella, it's Frank. You know, your cousin Frank
Hancock, Uncle Tom's son.'
Still she didn't speak. Her only reaction was the
production of a thin trickle of water from her left eye. I
squeezed her hand and said, 'If you want you can come
home with me, love, Auntie Mary, Nan and Aggie'll be
so pleased to see you.'
Stella made a squeaking sound in her throat, like a
bird.
'Stella?'
The little nurse shook her head sadly and mouthed,
'Shocked.'
As if I didn't know, but she was only a kid and she
was doing her best.
'I tell you what, Stel,' I said, after a pause, 'I need a
couple of gas mantles for the flat, so what say I go next
door to Bedwells, get them, and then come back for
another chat in a couple of ticks?'
Still Stella failed to respond. But I got up and made
my way out of the room with a promise to 'see you in a
mo' on my lips. Bedwells, the general store next to the
police station, was not, of course, my destination.
Although I could see that Stella was going to be bad,
probably for some considerable time, I didn't want to
give her over to Claybury without some more
information, so I made my way back to the front desk
and Sergeant Hill. When I got there, however, I found
that he wasn't alone. Three Military Policemen, all
strangers to me, were with him.
'Oh, well,' I heard him say, 'if that's the law then
that's that, I suppose. I've always found him, and her,
to be very respectable people.'
'That's the whole point about being a spy,' a spotty
young private said. 'You'd never know.'
'Private
'They're enemy foreigners,' the young man
responded curtly. 'Who knows what they're really
doing here?'
'Still,' Sergeant Hill said dubiously, 'Heinrich
Feldman...' Then, seeing me, he cleared his throat
and said, 'Ah, Mr Hancock ...'
I, of course, knew a little about the search for
Heinrich and Eva Feldman from my recent
conversation with the 'dishy' Sergeant Williams. I'd
denied all knowledge of the Feldmans to him. These
MPs, who might or might not have been Williams's boys,
looked at me with ill-disguised disdain. But youngsters
are not that keen on people in my profession.
'Sergeant Hill,' I said, 'could I perhaps have a bit of
a chat about Stella?'
'Yes, of course,' he said, and after first taking leave of
the MPs he ushered me through into the back office
where we talked together about our Stella.
'I see 'em all the time,' he said, as he sat down
behind a big desk covered with candle stubs and lit his
pipe. 'Bomb 'appy, they wander about talking rubbish
many of 'em. But your Stella, well, she's always been a
nervous woman, hasn't she, Mr Hancock?'
'Yes.'
'So Claybury
'I do know about places like that, Sergeant,' I said.
'Not to point the finger, you understand, but I don't
always think that asylums are necessarily the best
places for people with bad nerves.'
'No.' He looked up sharply at me, Hancock, the
barmy bomb-happy old soldier always on the run from
Hitler's Luftwaffe. He'd seen me out and about when
a raid was on and both he and I knew it. 'No,' he
repeated, 'not everything is as it seems, is it, Mr
Hancock?'
He'd been in the first lot too, so I imagined that was
what he had to be talking about. But then there was the
Feldman couple, that nice old clock-repairer and his
wife - the young MP had mentioned the word 'spy'.
'People can be surprising,' he said. 'Yes.'
Suddenly I'd made up my mind. 'I'm going to take
Stella back to our place, Sergeant,' I said. I couldn't
think about Claybury. 'Give her a chance. See how we
all get on.'
He was uncertain, I could see, but he nodded.
'I know she's always been a bit barmy, but she isn't
generally loud or a problem,' I said. 'And even when
people do have troubles they generally keep to their
character, don't they?' He didn't reply or respond in
any way. 'Sergeant Hill, have the Military Police caught
up with Heinrich and Eva Feldman?'
'You know I can't say anything about that. Careless
talk and--'
'A Sergeant Williams came to see me the other day,'
I said. 'He's looking for deserters and others up in
Epping Forest...'
'Yes, I know.' Then he frowned. 'Why did he come
to see you?'
I told him about my first visit to the Gypsy camp and
my experience of the original 'miracle'. 'Sergeant
Williams mentioned the Feldmans to me,' I said. 'He
said I should keep an eye open for them if I visited the
forest again.'
Sergeant Hill smiled. 'I bet you didn't, though, did
you? I bet you didn't even say you knew them.'
I smiled too. Both the sergeant and I are EastEnders:
I didn't have to explain anything to him.
'Williams was also keen to find a Gypsy, another
German,' I said.
'Yes.' Sergeant Hill sucked thoughtfully on his pipe
before he said, 'Everything's about spies at the
moment. The Feldmans, this Gypsy. I don't believe all
of it, myself. It's not Williams in charge up in the forest,
it's an officer, Mansard, a captain. It's a bit of a mess up
there in the forest if you ask me, what with the
Gypsies, this "vision" business and the MPs going
about their work. Captain Mansard wants that Gypsy
particularly. We have to find him soon.'
'Do you know why?'
'Even if I did I couldn't tell you, Mr Hancock,
discreet as I know you are. I mean, blimey, if Heinrich
Feldman or any other Jew for that matter can be a Nazi
spy, who can an honest patriotic copper trust, eh? You
tell me.'
As I stood up to go I said, 'I don't believe the
Feldmans are spies, do you?'
'People throw words around without thinking much
of the time, especially the military.'
'So you don't think they're spies, then?' I said.
Sergeant Hill looked at me steadily, then said, 'You
want to take your Stella off now, then?'
'Yes, I'll take her,' I said, with a sigh. 'Don't want her
babbling nonsense where someone might hear and get
the wrong idea, do we? I mean, if Jews can be spies,
why not nutcases?'
Sergeant Hill, I knew, was aware of my views about
internment. When our Doris's father-in-law had been
interned for six months, she had told Constable Fred
Bryant all about it and about my useless efforts to stop
it. Fred blabs so the whole station had to have known
Doris's and my business. But Sergeant Hill just
shrugged his shoulders helplessly and let me leave
without further comment. For my part I was saddened
that the Feldmans had, or so it would seem, been
caught and I knew that Hannah would be upset too.
Eva Feldman, particularly, had suffered so much
already under the Nazis. What, I wondered, as I made
my way back to Stella, was the state of play with the
Gypsy Martin Stojka?

Having Stella at home in our cramped flat wasn't easy
for the next few days. I was very busy and didn't have
to bear the brunt of it - that was done by the Duchess
and my sisters. Poor Nan even had to share what few
clothes she had with Stella, our cousin having lost the
lot. Not that Stella seemed to care much, of course. To
look at her face was like staring into an empty bucket.
Towards the end of that week I came home one
evening to find the Reverend Ernie Sutton in our
parlour with the still silent Stella.
'I met Ernie outside the Abbey Arms,' Aggie said,
grabbing hold of me just before I went into our dark
and now very quiet parlour. 'Nan and Mum keep going
on about how our Stella's a soul in torment, so I got her
a priest.'
'Wrong religion,' I said, but smiled at my sister. 'Well
done anyway, Ag. Ernie's a nice bloke.'
'I just want somebody to get her to talk,' Aggie said,
as she walked towards the kitchen. 'Gives me the
heebie-jeebies, her just sitting there like two penn'orth
of Gawd 'elp us. I've put your shirts in the copper.
Christ knows if we'll ever get them dry but--'
'Thanks, Ag,' I replied, as I went into the parlour.
We had finally managed to tell Stella that Uncle
Percy had died the previous day. When the Duchess
began to explain, however, Stella put her hands over
her ears and screamed. I felt that the sooner I could
arrange a funeral for Percy the better, although even I
couldn't do it with absolutely nothing - hot yet. Any bit
of flesh would have done or even a piece of clothing at
a pinch, but so far the Auxiliary Fire boys had come up
with nothing. Uncle Percy had vaporised and an
'empty coffin' do was, I knew, on the cards.
When I went into the parlour I found a calm, if still
silent, Stella seemingly hanging on Ernie's every word.
'Your auntie Mary has said that you can stay here for
as long as you like,' I heard him say, in that gentle, low
toned way he has. 'Your dear dad is with God, Stella,
but you have your Auntie Mary and Nancy, Agnes and
Frank. You've people, which is more than many folk
have got.'
Her eyes were wide and unseeing like a lunatic's. I
must admit that even when Ernie eventually got Stella
to acknowledge his existence, I had a moment or two of
wishing I'd never taken her in. It's something I wasn't
proud of then and I'm not now.
When Stella had had enough she got up and went to
be on her own in Nan's room. As we watched her leave,
Ernie said, 'She's a long way to go, Frank. The shock
has taken her very badly. I wish I could do more. I
could come back ...'
I said I thought that might be a good idea, as long as
Ernie didn't mind providing comfort to someone
outside his own flock. Just the idea of it made him
smile. 'We all do our bit wherever we're needed, these
days,' he said. 'I mean, look at you and me and those
Gypsies.' And then, suddenly, he frowned. 'You were
there when the girl had her vision, weren't you, Frank?'
We hadn't spoken since Rosie Lee's funeral - there's
little time for anything apart from work, these days - so
I now took the opportunity to unburden my soul, in
part, to the Reverend Ernie Sutton. When I'd finished
my story he said, 'You know, I've had a conversation
with Philip Burton about this and we're both worried.'
'Father Burton's very anti-mystical,' I said. 'Always
has been.'
'And probably with good reason,' Ernie said, as he
offered me a Passing Cloud. 'People get hysterical
around such things. They build up expectations about
what might be about to happen.'
'Oh, I know it can't be real,' I said, as I took one of
his fags and lit it. 'But there are a lot of happy people
up there in the forest at the moment.'
The gas in the pipes hissed as it made its way
sluggishly towards the single mantle that we lit in our
now completely boarded-up parlour.
'What do you mean it can't be real?' Ernie asked.
'Just because you're an atheist?'
'No.' I told him of how Lily had originally denied
that her vision was of the Blessed Virgin. I told him
about how her brother-in-law had behaved and about
how the look of the girl had puzzled and, in a way,
frightened me too.
'Well, it isn't typical of this type of thing,' Ernie said,
when I had finished. 'As Philip pointed out, the Virgin
usually - at Lourdes and that place in Portugal, Fatima
- speaks to the recipient. She asks the person to come
back again or bring others. Sometimes there are
prophesies and instructions. But with Lily Lee there
was nothing.'
'Because it isn't the Virgin Mary,' I said. 'Lily's
seeing something, talking to something . ..'
'But nothing divine?'
'I don't think so. I don't know,' I said. 'But
something isn't right.'
'All those people up there are expecting a miracle,'
Ernie said. 'If it's a hoax they're going to be angry and
disappointed.'
I puffed at my fag for a few moments. 'I don't think
it's a hoax exactly, Ernie.'
'Then what is it?'
'As I said, Lily is seeing something. But it's difficult.
On the one hand I feel she's genuine but on the other
I know she performs parlour tricks.' I told him about
the Head. 'But anyway,' I said, 'there's so many people
up there now that if the coppers or anyone did try to go
in and break it up to prove it was a fraud they wouldn't
have much luck.'
Ernie sighed. 'But where is it going to end, Frank?'
'I don't know, mate,' I said. 'There's so much
going on in the forest, what with the MPs all over the
shop searching for deserters and gangsters and
foreigners .. .'
'The Feldmans.' Ernie shook his head. 'I heard. A
bad business. Poor Heinrich and Eva.' He paused.
'Frank,' he said, 'Father Burton, myself or someone in
the Church needs to speak to this Lily Lee before all
this goes too far. You've been up there a few times you
had Betty Lee here ...'
'Yes, we did. It was a strange time, I can tell you!'
'I don't doubt it,' Ernie said. 'But I expect you got
some sort of idea about what they're like from having
her here, didn't you?'
'A bit, I suppose, not enough to make me an expert
but if you want me to go up to the forest with you I'll
do that,' I said. 'I can't add anything to what I've
already told you except that.. .' I recalled the last
frantic time I had seen Lily Lee, out of her tent and
obviously afraid.
'What?' Ernie prompted. 'Except what, Frank?'
'Except there's a man wants something from her,' I
said. 'I don't know who he is or what he wants. All I
know is that she's not letting him have whatever it is.'
And that was all I did know. As far as I could tell,
Lily Lee lived - discounting the Head - alone and
without obvious involvement with a boyfriend. Still
grieving for her sister, she appeared to be quite distant
from the rest of her family and, in fact, from the whole
group. There was some awe among the Gypsies
regarding her relationship with the Head that,
considering it was a parlour trick, had to have been put
on for my benefit. I began to wonder who the Head
might be, whether I had seen him about the camp and
if, in fact, it had been the Head with whom Lily had
argued when I was in the forest with Hannah. If it was,
Lily was more controlled by than controlling her
parlour trick. The thought made me feel quite cold.
'We should go and see the Gypsies soon,' Ernie said,
as he was leaving later on. 'I'll speak to Philip Burton
and then I'll get back to you, Frank.'
Chapter Seven



The following day was so hard it almost killed me.
Like most people now, I'm getting used to
hiking across piles of rubble. When every night
and some days bring wave after wave of German
bombers what can you expect? Even working in a shop
without any daylight and only intermittent gaslight is something you can get used to. The workload isn't,
because in my line of business a lot of work means a lot
of death.
We started in the morning with one old boy from
Upton Park and a box full of God-knows-what that was
supposed to be an ARP warden from five minutes
down the road. I'd known him a bit so after that one,
which was held up at the East London, I felt I had to
put my head around the door of the wake. The
warden's wife, a plump, toothless woman in her
thirties, seemed to want to cry on my shoulder rather
more than she should so getting away wasn't easy. I
hadn't slept the previous night so I was tired even then.
The old fellow from Upton Park had been very big,
and with only Arthur and Walter fit to bear - often we
have Doris's husband Alfie, or members of the
deceased's family - I'd had to turn to and help.
By the time we got to New Barn Street to pick up
the body of an old girl who had died a natural death, I
was even more tired and quite sore about the
shoulders. Arthur, who had just learned to drive the
motor hearse, was in a mood because everyone that day
had requested the horses and the last thing I needed on
top of all that was the Luftwaffe. Walter was about to
put Charlotte Twigg's coffin lid on when the sirens
went.
'Jesus, not again!'
I shot him a stern look. Charlotte's daughter, Esme
Dixon, was in the room and didn't look amused.
'Better get down your Anderson, Mrs Dixon,' I said,
as I ushered both her and Walter out of the small family
parlour.
'But what about Mum?' the woman asked, as she
staggered shakily into her long, dark hallway.
It wasn't the first time that had happened so I was
ready for at least one of the relatives to want to take the
dear departed down to the shelter with the rest of the
family. The first time I'd had to restrain one grieving
son until he came to his senses.
'I'd be obliged if you could find some room in your
Anderson for my two lads,' I said, as I pushed Walter
and Arthur out towards the scullery before me.
'But Mum
'Your mum's dead, love,' I said, as gently as time and
events allowed. 'My lads are alive.'
She looked at me with fury, then told one of her sons
to take Arthur and Walter down to the shelter. I
thanked her, then made my way back to the hearse.
'What about you?' she called after me.
'My place is with the horses,' I replied, which, of
course, was in part the gospel truth. Our geldings Rama
and Sita have nice quiet natures, especially Sita, but
when the bombs start coming down the poor things get
very scared. 'It's all right, boys,' I said, as I unshackled
the horses from the hearse. 'Come on.' I took their
bridles and walked them forward out of the way of the
empty carriage behind. 'Come on, my good boys.'
My horses trust me, but those first explosions, which
were taking place down at Silvertown, made them bare
their teeth and roll their eyes. 'Sssh.' I held their
bridles tightly, pulling their flanks in towards my body.
Even though we weren't touching I could feel their
sides trembling with terror. Inside my head the things
that remain from the trenches started to scream and
rave as the bombs descended over the East End, and
all I could see in front of my eyes was blood. Rolling
down my face, pouring into a gutter that was not a
gutter any more but a trench full of the bloated dead
faces of all my old mates from 1914. With the horses in
tow I couldn't run, however much I might have wanted
to, so the three of us shuffled around in the middle of
New Barn Street, moving in strange uneven circles. We
must have resembled some hellish animal turn at the
circus.
I suppose that, from beginning to end, the raid only
lasted an hour. But holding on to the horses while I
temporarily lost my mind had taken its toll. When
finally, and only with help from Walter, I managed to
get the boys tethered to the hearse again, my shoulders
ached something rotten. As I bent down to pick up the
few little bunches of flowers that had been on the
hearse before the raid, Arthur came over and said, 'Mr
H, you'd better come inside the house. Something
terrible's happened.'
The late Charlotte Twigg's parlour was now almost
unrecognisable. Just over an hour before, the oak
sideboard had been set with the bottles of beer and
ginger wine all ready for the wake. Now it had been
smashed in half by a hissing gas pipe, which hung from
the back wall like an angry snake. The hard chairs that had been lined up around the wall were splintered to
matchwood. Worst of all, however, Esme Dixon and
her daughter Ruby were screaming their heads off
because Charlotte Twigg had been blown clean out of
her coffin and up against the window, which had let in
light from the yard. With her head out of the now
empty casement and her legs dangling over the
remnants of the sideboard, Charlotte Twigg looked like
a broken rag-doll.
'Gawd help us!' Esme Dixon screamed. 'Bloody
Jerries! Look what they've done to Mum!'
Charlotte's coffin had ceased to exist so I knew I'd
have to go back to the shop and see if we had another
suitable for her. 'Get these ladies out of here while I try
to sort this out,' I said to Arthur. The boy nodded, then
began gently to lead the women out into the glass- and
metal-strewn yard.
Just before the Heavy Rescue boys arrived to deal
with the gas and the general devastation along New
Barn Street, I walked over to where Charlotte Twigg
hung and grasped one of her cold, smashed hands. I
said nothing out loud, but in my head I promised her
that it'd be all right in the end, that I'd get her to where
I knew she needed to be. The dead have to be
protected on their last journey - the living can so often
put the kibosh on it with their violence and selfishness.
This is what I do. It is almost entirely why I exist.
As I walked back out into the street, I heard one of
the ARP wardens talking to a copper. 'Virgin Mary up
Epping still ain't put a stop to the Luftwaffe, then,' he
said, laughing.
'Oh, that'll all die a death soon, you mark my words,'
the copper replied, also with a chuckle in his voice.
But one bombing raid wasn't going to change what
was going on up in the forest - the promise of Lily's
vision was too powerful for that. Hannah, who had
been, unbeknownst to me, up in the forest when the
raid was on with her friend Bella, was to tell me about
it later that evening. When, drawn and exhausted, I got
home after my day from hell, she was waiting for me in
the shop.

'Them military coppers took that Gypsy camp apart
today,' Hannah said, once Doris had given us tea and
gone off home. 'People were going bonkers.'
'Well, the Gypsies ...'
'And the rest of them too,' Hannah said. 'Women
screaming as how it was sacrilegious and suchlike.
Some blokes even tried to fight the coppers - there's so
much feeling for this "miracle" thing up there. But
they done it anyway. The officer in charge, he just
bowled in and had all the Gypsies' tents down in a
couple of minutes.'
'Even Lily's?' I asked.
'So people said. I never got close enough to see for
myself,' Hannah replied. 'But those as did said that the
girl just stood there and let this officer knock her tent
down with his stick.'
I thought about the table with the Head and asked,
'What was in Lily's tent? Do you know?'
'Well, that was queer,' Hannah said, as she sipped
her tea, and then lit a Woodbine. 'After what you said
about that Head, I thought people would be able to see
at least something of it. But, no. Apart from a few rags,
the tent was empty so I heard. People were amazed by
the girl's poverty. Some of them mad old Irish bags you
get round here were going on about how that proved
Lily had to be a saint. You Christians don't half set a lot
of store by having nothing!'
I smiled.
'Mind you, what I did see, afterwards, was that
Military Police officer and he was none too pleased,'
Hannah continued. 'I heard him talk about the Gypsy
you told me about, that German, to one of his men. He
said that catching him was all that mattered and that if
he found out any of the Gypsies or anyone else had
been lying to him they'd be for the high jump.'
Hannah pulled a face. 'I didn't like him, H, that officer.
Some bloke told Bella it was him what found the
Feldmans.'
Sergeant Hill up at Plaistow had told me about
Captain Mansard and his need to find the Gypsy
Stojka. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that
perhaps Stojka was more than a rather leery Gyppo
who just happened to be a German too. There had to
be reasons for basically attacking the Gypsy camp in
opposition to all the 'faithful' up in the forest, who now
considered Lily and her people to be almost at one
with God Almighty. I wondered, too, whether this
action by the MPs was just one of many. After all, I had
never found out who Lily had been talking to when
she'd run away crying from someone when I'd been up
at Eagle Pond. Maybe Mansard, Williams or another of
their blokes had pressed her on the subject of Stojka.
Although why they would think she might know
something I couldn't imagine. Lily and her folks were
- except Betty and Edward, who were Rumanians English
Gypsies, as far as I knew. They certainly
weren't German. There was no reason, Gypsy blood
aside, why they should know this Stojka chap at all.
'So how was it up at the camp when you left?' I
asked Hannah. 'Are the MPs still up there?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Last me and Bella saw, they were
watching the Gyppos put their tents back up again. It
was quiet, but not a good atmosphere. I got the feeling
the coppers won't move now.'
'They're between the Gypsies and the people?'
'Yes.'
I shook my head in despair. 'Well, that's all very good
until Lily starts having her visions again,' I said. 'If the
MPs try to keep them back from "their" Virgin there'll
be hell to pay. There's some right hard nuts up there,
and what with the MPs having rifles ...' I sighed. 'As
Ernie Sutton said to me only yesterday, someone, he
thinks a clergyman, needs to talk to the Gypsies and
find out what's really going on - if that's possible, of
course.'
'Gyppos are close.'
'Yes, I know, but if the MPs are putting pressure on
them they might welcome some help. They might
need it. I think I'll speak to Ernie.'
There was a great deal of doubt in Hannah's eyes,
but I picked up the telephone receiver to see whether
I had a line or not and when I found I had, I called the
Reverend Ernie Sutton without further ado. In spite of
my tiredness, just one hour later I found myself driving
Ernie and Hannah slowly through the dusky blacked
out streets, over to Eagle Pond and the unusually
subdued Gypsy camp.

'We don't know anything about this man you speak of,'
Mr Lee said, in answer to my question about Martin
Stojka. 'These soldiers here,' he pointed to the group
of MPs on the perimeter of the camp, 'they just come
and tear our tents down.'
'Because they're looking for Martin Stojka, yes,' I
replied. 'He's a German Gypsy. Didn't Captain
Mansard ask you about him?'
'No.' Mr Lee turned his face away from me as he
spoke. 'No one said nothing, just smashed up the
camp.'
I noticed that Lily's tent, unlike the others, was still
flattened out on the damp ground. 'Where's Lily?'
The Gypsy shrugged.
'And the Head?'
'Alive.' Then, turning to Ernie, he said, 'Would you
like a beer, Reverend? We can have no fire because of
the German aeroplanes, but if you want to come into
my tent you will be welcome. The season grows cold at
night now.'
Ernie smiled. 'Yes, thank you.' As we followed Mr
Lee towards his tent, he said, 'Maybe he'll talk when
he's not being watched.'
'Maybe,' I agreed, as I glanced at the many Military
Police who surrounded the camp. Only with great
reluctance had they allowed Ernie and me in to see the
Gypsies. Ernie's position as a vicar had secured it for us
in the end. But they hadn't allowed Hannah to enter
and she was, I knew, waiting with the 'faithful', anxious
to get back to her home and 'work'.
Mr Lee placed a bottle of Mackeson in Ernie's
hands and led us into his tent, which, like his
daughter's, was damp and covered with strange pieces
of animal bone and feather. Before we had a chance to
sit down he said, 'As you are men who work with life
and death, I can tell you things.'
Ernie and I positioned ourselves on a long pile of
rags.
'Yes, I know the military men are looking for a
Romany from Germany,' Mr Lee said, as he rolled and
lit a short, dark fag. 'But they don't tell me.'
'Then how do you know?' I asked.
'From my daughter Lily.'
Did the girl, I wonder, now have the gift of mind
reading as well as being a visionary? 'How did Lily
know?'
'The young sergeant, Williams, told her. He is in
love with my daughter. He bothers her sometimes,' Mr
Lee said, in that matter-of-fact way a lot of Gypsies in
this country seem to have. So maybe it had been
Williams I had heard talking to Lily the first time I'd
been up to the Pond with Hannah. Perhaps their
encounter had been of a romantic nature.
'So why do the MPs think that you or Lily or anyone
in your group would know about the fugitive Martin
Stojka?'
'Because he and us are all Romanies,' Mr Lee
replied. 'Gauje believe we all know one another. They
also think we have powerful magic, that we can do
impossible things.'
'Well, to be fair, having a head with no body that can
talk is pretty magical,' I said. 'And now this "miracle"--'
'I don't know nothing about that,' the Gypsy cut in
quickly. 'What Lily sees is given only to her. I don't
know why.'
. 'Between ourselves do you think that her vision is of
the Virgin Mary?' Ernie asked. 'Honestly?'
Mr Lee shrugged. 'There's just horses, bears and the
road in my life,' he said. 'If people choose to believe
something, that is their business. If my daughter has
religion, that is something that she alone knows. You'll
need to speak to her.'
'You haven't?' Ernie asked, disbelief in his voice.
'Ever since Rosie died she has talked almost only to
the Head,' the Gypsy replied.
'I heard her talking to a man in the forest a few days
back,' I said. 'If that was Williams . ..'
'My daughter, whatever is happening to her, won't
go with no gaujo,' Mr Lee responded gravely. 'You talk
about religion, but religion is nothing. The romanipe, our way of life, our beliefs and our people, that is
everything.'
'So you've warned Sergeant Williams off?'
'Lily has,' he said. 'She doesn't want him. He and
the others came just before my other daughter died,
looking for bad people in the forest. Lily told him then
she wouldn't look at no gaujo. She tells him now. When he goes he will forget her.'
'And if he doesn't?' I asked. 'Lily is quite the famous
girl at the moment, Mr Lee.'
'It will pass,' he replied, with what I felt was a lot of
confidence. 'Lily is Romany. She will move on and be
forgotten.'
Both Ernie and I felt that what he was saying, in a
roundabout way, was that he didn't believe in Lily's
visions. Not that he had in any way colluded with his
daughter to trick people. That his wife and some of
the other Gypsy women were selling fortunes and
other goods to the hordes of religious gauje in their
midst was neither here nor there. Gypsies, like most
travelling folk, take advantage of opportunities as and
when they come along, whatever those opportunities
might be.
'You know that if Lily continues to see things and
the Military Policemen try to keep the people from her
there could be a riot?' Ernie told the Gypsy as he
sucked hard at his bottle of beer.
'Why would they try, the policemen, to do that?' Mr
Lee asked.
'Because they have it in their heads that you know
where this German Stojka is,' I said. 'They may try to
withhold Lily to put pressure on you to give this man
up. You're the only group of Gypsies in the forest. . .'
'I tell you, we don't know such a man from Germany.
He, Williams, he's punishing my daughter for not going
with him,' Mr Lee said gravely. 'Gaujo men always
think bad things about our women.'
'Be that as it may,' I replied. 'But if Lily starts seeing
whatever it is she sees and the MPs stop people going
to her, there'll be trouble. People might get hurt. The
reverend and I are here to see what we can do to stop
that.'
'Well, you'd better speak to Williams and his boss,
then,' Mr Lee replied. 'It is all out of my hands.'
Ernie Sutton shook his head. 'But, Mr Lee,' he said,
'senior churchmen will come up here to see your
daughter. They have to reach some sort of, well,
decision about what.. .'
'They can come and they can see,' Mr Lee replied.
'Ain't stoppin' 'em.'
'Mr Lee, they'll come to see whether they think
Lily's visions are genuine. If they think they're not,
then ...'
'They entitled to theirs opinion,' Mr Lee said, in a
philosophical manner. 'Mind, who can say what is or is
not in the world unseen do have to be a better man
than me.'
I for one didn't know about that. Father Burton at
least, if he deigned to come at all, was not inclined to
an open mind.
'And Lily,' I said, 'she's the one, after all...'
'Oh, Lily is far away in the forest now,' Mr Lee said.
'What the soldiers done, it upset her.'
'On her own? But it's getting dark,' I said.
Mr Lee relit his roll-up. 'She's got the Head with
her. She'll come to no harm.'

Hannah hadn't seen Lily Lee any more than anyone
else had. But like the good listener I knew her to be,
she'd kept her ear to the ground among the confused
crowd of people who were being held back from the
Gypsy camp by the straight-faced MPs.
'She just disappeared,' Hannah told me, as soon as
Ernie and I caught up with her in what was becoming
a very dark night indeed.
'So no one saw her go?'
'A lot of people saw the MPs knock her tent down,'
Hannah said. 'But Lily weren't in it. I don't think this
lot,' she nodded at the huge crowd of people beyond
the Gypsy camp, 'would be as calm as they are if she
had been. They all believe bleedin' mad stuff here begging
your pardon, Reverend,' she said to Ernie.
'Apparently, according to some, the Virgin Mary's due
to battle the Luftwaffe in the skies above the forest
tonight. I didn't hear whether Jesus and God were also
involved but...' She changed the subject. 'The officer
in charge here, Mansard he's called, I think I've seen
him before, H.'
'Have you?' I wondered whether he was one of her
customers, and my blood began to pound with anger.
But I didn't want to start a conversation about that with
Ernie at my side. After all, he didn't know, as far as I
could tell, what Hannah did for a living and I was keen
to keep it that way.
However, before I could say anything else, Hannah
continued, 'Yeah. I don't know where but I've a feeling
it might have been up home.'
'Up home' for Hannah is not Canning Town, where
she lives now, but Spitalfields, where so many Jews
have their homes and businesses.
'Military types go all over the place,' Ernie said,
'especially these days.'
'Yes.'
What sounded like many hundreds of gasps made us
all glance up. There was nothing, as far as I could tell,
to see.
'Oh, there she is, Gawd bless her!' a fat, tired
looking woman standing just in front of one of the
motionless MPs said.
'Where's who?' Hannah asked, as she peered into
the darkness to where the woman was now pointing.
'Lily?'
'The Blessed Lily,' the fat woman corrected. 'Gawd
love her.'
Ernie and I squinted into the darkness until I saw
the lone, bedraggled figure of a young girl drag itself
slowly towards us. People cheered, some sang - the
MPs gazed upon the crowd with menace and fear, and
at a barked order from somewhere they made their
weapons ready to fire.
I turned to Ernie and said, 'This is madness.'
'Lily! Lily!' the people chanted.
'Here she comes!'
'What the Virgin say to you, love?' one old man
asked, as the girl, her face and clothes covered with
mud, made her way past the MPs and attempted to get
to her people. 'The war over, is it?'
She ignored him. As she pushed forward as quickly
as she could, all I heard her say was, 'Leave me alone!
Leave me alone!'
When she drew level with me, however, I
remembered what Mr Lee had said to Ernie and me
about Lily when we were in his tent and I said,
'Where's the Head, Lily? Is he . ..'
'He's with me,' she replied, and frowned. 'He's
always with me. You just can't see him.'
What she said and the way she stared at me made me
feel cold. When the bombs are raining down and I'm
out running away from the blood and the nightmares in
my mind, I know I can't always tell what's real and
what isn't. Sometimes things appear that could be true
of what is going on now and what went on in Flanders
twenty-two years ago. But occasionally my 'visions' are
not easy to interpret, even for me, and with the
Gypsies' seeming ambivalence to the Head and its
reality, this was one of those moments. What on earth
could Lily mean by saying that the Head was with her?
Even I could see that she was alone. But before I could
ask her to tell me more she had gone towards her
mother and father, who had come out to wait for her in
the wake of the commotion. Hannah, Ernie and I
watched with the many thousands around us as Lily
embraced her parents, then followed them into their
tent. As she did so, Bruno the bear gave a contented
growl from his place behind their canvas home.
'Oh, well,' a bright young girl, with a cup of steaming
beef tea in her hands, said, as the crowd began to break
up, 'I suppose that's all the miracles we're going to get
tonight. More tomorrow.'
The MPs on the perimeter of the camp seemed to
relax, but not enough to want to talk to either Ernie or
me. If senior churchmen wanted to verify Lily's
miracles then they, like any other citizens, could do so.
The young privates we attempted to speak to made it
clear that they'd deal with that eventuality as and
when.
On the way back to the car I did look towards the bit
of forest Lily had come from earlier, and I thought I
saw a figure that could have been a military type
sheltering there. Was it Sergeant Williams? Neither
Hannah nor Ernie had seen whoever it was but later I
remembered that I hadn't seen Williams in or around
the camp prior to that 'appearance'. Had he, Lily and
even the Head been out in the forest doing or saying
things that they didn't want others to hear? Was I going
barmy even thinking that the Head was with them (or
anyone else for that matter)?
Neither Hannah nor Ernie spoke to me about any of
the things we had seen and done in the forest on our
way home to the East End. All three of us were anxious
to get back before the sirens went, as we all knew full
well they would. Hannah and Ernie wanted to be near
their own shelters when that happened and me, well, I
just didn't want to have to take responsibility for
anyone other than myself. I didn't want to have to
make my girl and my mate safe before I took off,
running away from the sounds and sights that torture
me. When the bombs fall I have to be above the
ground in a place I know I can look in the eye whatever
might be about to kill me or make me go off my nut.
It's important for us old refugees from the mud of
Flanders that we die above the ground.
As she got out of the car Hannah, said, as if
remembering something, 'Oh, H, tomorrow night
you're taking me out.'
I frowned. Of course, I always like taking Hannah
out but I was alarmed as this arrangement had slipped
my mind.
'To the Hackney Empire,' Hannah said, 'to see my
old mate David Green.'
'David Green?'
'Blimey,' she said. 'Brain like a sieve, you've got!
The magician bloke with the Egyptian Head turn.'
'Oh, yes.'
Now I remembered. The Egyptian Head. I'd
wanted to know how like or unlike it was to Lily Lee's
attraction. Now I was going to find out.
Chapter Eight



I'm not, in general, a great one for music-hall
turns. If you get a girl or a fellow with a really
good voice and a rousing set of songs, that's nice.
But a lot of the other acts can leave me cold. A case in
point was the 'Comedy Partnership of Bertie Rouse
and his "Cheeky" Niece Harriet'. The joke in this case
was that the 'girl' was actually a forty-five-year-old
bloke in a blond wig and a dress, which might have
been funny if either of them had known any jokes. But
the Rouses, just like the three poor old buggers who
did a bad turn of the Wilson, Keppel and Betty type,
were useless and I realised early on that I should've
been drunk before I set foot in the place. Outside the
concert parties to entertain the troops there's little new
blood on the halls, these days. There's little new blood
out of a uniform.
Hannah and I had caught a bus up to Mare Street,
Hackney, which is where the old Empire is, just after I
shut up the shop at six. It had already been dark so our
journey was gloomy - on account of the blackout - and
very, very cold. October was turning into November,
which, in my book, is winter.
'All Hallows Eve tomorrow,' I said to Hannah, as I
buried one of my arms in the deep pile of her astrakhan
jacket.
Hannah said, 'What's that mean?'
'All aboard!' the bus conductor yelled, to anyone
who might still want to get on to a bus where, on
account of the blackout light we have to put up with,
everyone looked deceased.
'All Hallows Eve is when the dead are supposed to
come back to haunt the living,' I said. 'There's all
manner of customs and frightening stories about it.'
'Sounds horrible,' Hannah said, then lit a fag and
changed the subject. 'Here,' she said, 'I wonder if
they've got one of them ventriloquists on the bill
tonight. I like them.'
But Hannah was to be disappointed - if not as much
as I was. She did find some of the entertainment funny
and she did tell me off for being what she described as
'so bloody miserable'. But by the time the interval
came, bringing with it a shower of fag ash all over my
trousers from the bloke sitting next to me, I wanted to
see this David Green bloke do his stuff and go. Luckily
for me, I didn't have to wait long.
'There you are,' Hannah said, as a short, fat balding
man walked on to the stage. 'The Wazir of the
Pharaohs as promised.'

It didn't take me long, in common with most of the
audience, to realise that the Wazir was as drunk as a
lord. What should have been card tricks, easy for a
skilled sober man, became acts of pathetic comedy in
the Wazir's trembling hands. People laughed, of course
they did, and if the Wazir himself had not seemed so
surprised and hurt, I would've thought that perhaps his
act was meant to be funny.
'Blimey, he's gone down the pan,' Hannah said, as
she shook her head over the antics of her old friend
David.
'He's drunk,' I said.
'I know. Never used to be, in spite of everything,'
she said. 'Wonder why he's so sloshed now.'
Some embarrassing nonsense with silk scarves
followed, after which the Wazir, whose only concession
to anything Oriental was an exotic scarf flung about his
shoulders, said, 'And now for the high point of my act
- the amazing, astounding and magical Egyptian
Head!'
One of the stagehands moved into the wings a
screen I'd noticed earlier at the back of the stage.
Behind it was a booth in which there stood an
apparently empty table. The Wazir, who stood to one
side of what was almost exactly the same arrangement
as the one I'd seen in Lily's tent, waved his magic wand
dramatically in the air. Smoke appeared, as if it was
coming out of the stage, covering the table and part of
the booth.
Some wag in the audience shouted, 'Them Egyptian
fags ain't 'arf strong, ain't they?'
I laughed for the first time that evening. But all the
time, as I watched the smoke clear around the
Egyptian Head's table, I was thinking. Anything could
have been happening under all that smoke. Something
obviously was. But with Lily's Head the illusion had
just appeared. No smoke, except that from the girl's
pipe and, except for the few moments I'd looked away
from it to the Gypsy, the Head had just come into
being before my eyes. And although Django, with his
sinister made-up face, had been unnerving, he hadn't
been funny like this one.
'Behold, the great Abu Abdul!' the Wazir said, in a
voice I imagined he thought sounded grand. 'The
famous, the impossible Egyptian Head of old Cairo!'
Like everyone else I beheld. God alone knows how
old he was, but his face was sunken at each side, which
suggested that the Egyptian Head didn't have a tooth
in his bonce. The fez on top of it all was several sizes
too big, which didn't help to make the illusion any
more regal. Old the Head was, but mysterious and
special he was not.
'Oooh,' moaned the Head, and then again, 'Oooh!'
I looked at Hannah, who looked back at me primly.
This magician was an old friend of hers, after all.
'Great Abu Abdul, you sound as if in pain,' the Wazir
said, in what, to his credit, was only just starting to be a
Cockney accent. 'Can we help you, O seer and
magician of the mysterious desert sphinx?'
As in Lily's tent, I could see right under the table to
the curtains at the back of the booth. This Head, like
the other, floated on a table top. Whether it was
concealed under the table or hidden somewhere else,
there had to be a body somewhere.
'O mighty Wazir, it was the terrible Pharaoh
Tutikamin what done for me!' the Egyptian Head said,
in an accent that owed more to Canning Town than
Cairo.
Hannah nudged me. 'What's David doing with that
old geezer? He had some pretty girl when I saw him
years ago.'
'The Wazir of the Pharaohs has obviously hit hard
times,' I said.
'He ain't just hit 'em,' Hannah replied. 'He's gone
right under.'
Fortunately we didn't have to put up with too much
more of the Egyptian Head act. After the Wazir had
finished and before the next act, 'Freddie the Dancing
Dalmatian', could come on, Hannah and I agreed to go
backstage.
In spite of his performance, I still wanted to meet
the Wazir David Green. I wanted to ask him why he'd
never passed in front of the Egyptian Head at any time.
Lily Lee hadn't either.

'Hannah Jacobs, as I live and piss!' The little fat man
now wearing a rusty Homburg over his shiny pate took
my girl into his arms and squeezed her. She didn't
seem entirely comfortable with it.
'Blimey, it has to be twenty years!' He pulled away
from Hannah the better to study her. 'Still gorgeous,
girl.'
'David ...'
'Come in! Come in and have a drink,' the magician
said, as he waved us into his tiny, dust-grimed dressing
room. Looking now at me he said, 'Husband?'
'Friend,' Hannah said, before I could.
David Green, the Wazir, smiled. 'You still. ..'
'Mama and Papa don't speak to me and I still make
my living in that way with . . .' Her voice petered out.
But the magician shrugged, indicating, I imagined,
that he knew what Hannah did. He went over to the
battered chest and mirror that passed for his artist's
dressing-table and poured some gin into a cracked half
pint glass. He handed this to Hannah, then turned
questioningly to me.
'No, thanks,' I said.
'Suit yourself,' he said. He offered Hannah his
dressing-table chair. 'Sit! Sit, Hannah! God, it's good to
see you!' He poured himself a truly enormous drink
and laughed. 'Old sinners like us, thrown out of our
nests, we should stay together.'
But his face, which became suddenly very red, told
another story: that he regretted what had just been
said.
'Yes,' a grave-faced Hannah replied. 'Davy--'
'Christ, no one's called me "Davy" since before the
Flood!' He laughed again, maniacally as drunks do. He
was, it seemed, as much a refugee from the Jewish
heartlands as Hannah. I wondered whether the drink
had been his offence or whether he drank to dull the
memory of whatever had happened many years before.
'So, you caught the act,' he said.
'Yeah.' Hannah took her fags out and lit one.
'Egyptian Head was a woman last time I saw it.'
The magician sighed. 'She left me.'
'To go back to the Pyramids?'
He shot her an unforgiving look.
'Back to Barking, then, was it?' Hannah said, and
then, with a quick glance up at me, got down to the
business of why we had come. It seemed that she
didn't want to linger here. 'Listen, Davy, my friend
Frank here, he wants to ask you something about your act.'
David Green pulled himself up to his full height of,
at most, five foot three, and said, 'A magician never
reveals his secrets.'
'Mr Green,' I said, 'I don't want to know how you
perform your Egyptian Head illusion--'
'Well, that's fucking good, then, isn't it!' he said
spitefully, and threw a quarter of a pint of gin down his
neck. "Cause I ain't telling ya!'
'Davy!'
'What?' His belligerence was as quick as it was
shocking. 'So, the turn stinks. I've still got my pride,
you know! I thought, Hannah, that you'd come to see me.'
He fancied her, or so it seemed.
'Davy, you and me were never.. . You were a mate. You were.'
'Yes, well, if I'd been more than that maybe a lot of
trouble would have been avoided.'
'Oh, don't you blame me for what you done!'
'Little Hannah Jacobs, so prim and nice and don't touch-me,
what became a whore for the goyim.' As if he
knew he'd gone too far, David Green stopped and his
flabby face drained of all colour. 'Hannah . . .'
Her face was like a thunderstorm. 'Oh, that's rich
coming from a bloke who likes to fiddle about with
little girls! Thought that might have slipped me mind,
did you?'
'Sssh!' He took another swig from his glass, then put
one shaky finger to his lips. 'No one knows ...'
Hannah looked at me. 'Davy here stuck his hands in
the rabbi's daughter's knickers. Blames me for it, so I
now learn.' She glanced at him and said, 'He was
twenty-eight and she was seven.'
'No, no, no, no!'
I'd never seen Hannah like this before: nasty. I felt
quite sorry for the poor bloke - or, rather, I would have
done if he hadn't been a pervert.
'Just because I left our manor before you don't
mean I don't keep in touch with people,' Hannah said.
'I know everything about what you done, Davy Green.
Why'd'ya think I only come to see your show once in
twenty years, an old mate like me? And we was good
mates, but after what you done .. . Now, my mate
Frank wants to ask you a few questions and I would
suggest that you answer him - and polite, like, too.'-.
There was a moment when I thought he might hit
me but then, maybe because deep down he knew he
was too drunk and flabby to do me any harm, he
slumped, sat down on his dressing-table and said, 'So,
Frank, what can I do for you?'
It wasn't a comfortable situation and I could see he
resented me, but I asked what I had to anyway.
'I want to know,' I said, 'whether it's possible in the
illusion for the magician to stand in front of the booth
and therefore in front of the Head?'
I'd given this some thought and I had an idea that
mirrors had to be involved - not that I knew how at that
moment.
'I won't say why but no,' he said, 'that ain't possible.'
'Are there mirrors under the table?' I asked.
'Reflecting the audience? Don't be daft!'
'No, reflecting something else,' I said. And then a
solution came to me. The body of the Head had to be
somewhere. 'If the mirrors come to a point in front of
the table they'll reflect the curtains of the booth that
surrounds the act, won't they?' I became, I admit, quite
excited by my idea. 'It'd give the illusion from the
front as if the Head was floating on top of the table. But
the body would have to be behind the mirrors,
wouldn't it?'
David Green did not reply.
But it would explain why Lily had kept to one side
of not only Django but the booth. If mirrors were in use
she would have had to, as the Wazir had had to. The
'Head', if this solution was correct, had to appear
through a hole in the table top. It made sense if, in
spite of everything, I still had a creeping feeling that
Lily's 'Head' was somehow 'real'. Partly it had to be
because she was a Gypsy, with all the mysterious
associations those people attract. I knew it was stupid,
but then, in his next breath, David Green threw the
question wide open again.
'Course, I did see it done once with the magician
walking in front of the act,' he said. 'When I was in the
Kate, I was posted to Egypt, Alexandria. Shit-hole it
was but there was this bloke, Arab, done this turn like
it was something real. Don't know how.'
'What do you mean "real"?' I asked.
'His Head, this Arab bloke's, it was truly just a head,'
David Green replied. 'I walked all round it, right close
up.'
'And you couldn't see any trickery?' I asked.
'No,' the magician replied. 'Not a bit of it. Give me
the right willies, I can tell you.'
"Ere, Davy, want to go for a pint, do ya?' The voice
was old and it came from a familiar head, which had
just poked itself around the door of David Green's
dressing room.
'All right, Stan,' David Green replied, and Abu
Abdul's head disappeared as quickly as it had
materialised.
'Stan, see,' David Green explained, after the old
man had left, 'needs his body. If he didn't he wouldn't
look half as funny as he does when he's smashed out of
his head on light and bitter.'


I had seen no one in the Gypsy camp so far who could
have been Lily's Head, yet he had to be there
somewhere. Whatever David Green's Arab had done in
Alexandria had to have been an illusion in itself. A
head couldn't live without a body - could it?
We left the Empire at just before nine and as we
walked out into the cold night air we peered up
nervously into the blackness of the sky. No Jerries as yet
but I, like millions of others, knew they would come.
'I'll take you home,' I said to Hannah, as I moved
her in what I hoped was a southerly direction. It's not
always easy to know in the blackout.
'Yes, but if there's a raid you can run off like you do,'
Hannah said, as she squeezed my arm affectionately.
'I'll find a shelter. I'm a big girl now'
I smiled. Although she doesn't understand, no one
who wasn't in the first lot can, Hannah accepts how I
am in raids and doesn't try to stop me doing what I
have to do.
'Your old mate Davy turned out to be a bit of a
character,' I said, after we'd lit the fags we knew we
shouldn't in the depths of the blackout.
'He's a dirty bastard,' Hannah replied simply.
'And you really, really don't like him, do you?'
'He fiddled with a young kiddie.'
'So why did we go and see him, Hannah?' I said. 'If
you dislike him?'
She sighed first, then smiled up at me. 'Because you
wanted to find out about the Head and Davy's the only
person I know who does that sort of thing.'
'I would have lived if you hadn't, love,' I said. 'I'd do
anything rather than hurt you, even indirectly.'
'And that's why I took you,' Hannah said. 'Because
you'd do anything for me.'
'Oh, Hannah.' I went to kiss her but she turned away
as she sometimes does when I show her what she feels
is too much affection. Even without her 'work' on the
streets dividing us, we can never be together on
account of our respective religions. So we both know
that what we have is hopeless. It just hurts Hannah a
little bit more than me, I think, when I show her my
feelings.
Experience told me to change the subject. 'So,
David Green,' I said, 'did he go to prison or...'
'No.'
'No?'
'Just as we take care of our own, we also punish
them,' Hannah said. 'David Green won't be going
back to his old home in the Montefiore Buildings
or anywhere else off the Highway till the day he
dies. Not after what he done and what was done
to him.'
'I thought you said he put his hand in the little girl's
knickers?'
'Oh, he done a lot more than that, H, believe me,'
Hannah said. 'He ruined that child for ever.'
It was cold, but after those words I felt even colder.
What David Green had done was inhuman. I could
only imagine how those who had found out about it had
punished him.
'How do you know all about it?' I asked Hannah.
'Whatever was done to Green was done outside the
law, and I imagine people wanted to keep it quiet. And
you ...'
'Even dead as I am to my mum and dad, I got to
know about my little cousin and what David Green
done to her.'
I stared down at her, and she said, 'Yes, my uncle
Nathan is a rabbi and, yes, some men in my family did
break David Green's nose and his ribs for his pains. Got
off lightly, I'd say. I don't think he's ever had real
relations with an adult woman. Maybe if I had given in
to his sweaty wandering hands when we was both
children...'
'You can't think like that,' I said, reeling inside from
yet another new piece of information about Hannah.
It's always the same with my girl. 'There's no excuse
for rape, Hannah,' I said. 'There's enough ways that
men can deal with their urges . . .'
'Using women like me, yes,' Hannah said.
'Hannah . ..'
'Put them fags out!' a loud voice yelled, from
somewhere in front of us. 'There's a fuckin' war on!'
We threw our fags down and walked on in silence.
Such overpowering darkness as you get in the blackout
is quite suitable for some trains of thought. I've always
known that East-Enders look after their own - Jews
may do it one way and Gentiles another but basically it
all comes out the same. Everyone has their own
customs and traditions, including the Gypsies in the
forest. But punishment is universal and people treat
certain crimes very seriously indeed. David Green,
I now felt, had got off lightly, as Hannah had said,
and, as a consequence, was a very lucky man. In some
quarters, maybe away from men of religion like
Hannah's uncle, he might have been killed.
The sirens started up then, as they always do, with a
hellish rising wail.
Chapter Nine

People often say after something terrible has
happened that they had bad feelings beforehand or a premonition about it. Most of
the time, of course, that's a load of rot. But the next day
I did feel strange - or, rather, what passes for strange
with me. We all worked hard. Two families in
Boundary Road had gone down with diphtheria some
time before. Now the first deaths had occurred - two
little sisters in one family and a girl of sixteen in the
other. Five nippers were still fighting for their lives in
the isolation hospital, and both sets of parents looked
like ghosts. When I went round to the first house, the
Wattses', to measure up and offer my condolences, the
mother said to me, 'I don't see no sense to it, Mr
Hancock. I don't see God or Jesus or none of it in
nothing.'
Her eyes were grey, dry and dead, as if she herself
had already gone beyond the normal state of living
flesh. I had a cup of tea with her and she gave me a
pilchard sandwich, just the one, that she had made
especially for me. For the very poor, producing even a
tiny piece of food is a source of pride so I had to eat it,
even though I can't stand tinned fish. Then she said, as
I was leaving, 'That girl up in Epping Forest supposed
to have seen Mary - you seen that?'
I nodded.
'More like the devil she's seeing,' Mrs Watts said,
before she closed the door behind me. 'It'll end in
tears, you mark my words.'
People say such things all the time and usually they
mean nothing. But I got back to the shop and the
feeling of doom increased when I found that my wand
had been smashed to matchwood in the previous
night's raid. An undertaker's wand, which to most
laypeople is just a silver-tipped stick, is important to
those in my line of work. Traditionally it was used as a
weapon to keep ne'er-do-wells and grave robbers away
from corpses. But there is an older interpretation: that
the wand might be a magical implement designed to
give spiritual as well as physical protection to the dear
departed. I don't believe that, but I inherited the wand
from my father, who in turn had got it from his.
'I remember Granddad saying he bought that from
an old bloke who'd actually used it on Resurrection
Men,' Nan said, as she bent down to help me pick
pieces of the shattered wand off the floor. 'Beat them
up he did as' they tried to steal a corpse from its coffin
for the doctors up the London Hospital.'
So-called Resurrection Men were rogues and toughs,
who stole bodies for doctors to practise their anatomy
skills on. Resurrection was rife in the nineteenth
century, especially in the East End where there was a
deluge of interesting deaths and diseases. The London
Hospital at Whitechapel was always, unofficially, in the
market for such corpses. Dad had told me that story
about the wand and its history too. It fitted in well with
my own beliefs about myself and my work. Only the
dead can be innocent, in my opinion. The living kill,
maim and torture their fellow creatures, and their
inventiveness in this regard seems limitless. Not even
the innocent dead are safe - I was in the trenches, and
I know. But I have always done what I can to protect
those I personally serve, and the wand had been a very
important part of that.
'What am I going to hold when I walk in front of a
coffin?' I asked Nan, as she folded bits of wood and
silver into her full-length apron. 'Dad would be
shocked rigid. I'm going to look like anyone else.'
My sister Nan doesn't smile or show affection very
often, but this time she made an exception and put her
hand on my shoulder. 'Dad's dead,' she said softly, 'so
he don't care. And as for you looking like anyone else,
that just ain't possible.' She turned away then and later,
when we talked again, it was of other things.
But the point had been made: who is like me around
here? Some people say that I look like this or that
Jewish actor, this or that Spanish or Italian boxer. But I
don't. I'm a tall version of the little Indian men who
come selling carpets door-to-door, I'm like the Gypsies,
Mr Lee, Horatio and his brother George Gordon. Jews
are good at entertaining people, while Italians and
Spaniards have a reputation for being romantic. I am
none of those things. I'm an undertaker and now I was
an undertaker without a wand. It made me want to cry.
I went out into the yard, where Arthur and Walter
were cleaning the hearses.
'Bad luck that is, Mr H,' Walter said, with a sharp
intake of breath when I told him about the shattered
wand. 'Very bad.'
'Load of cobblers, more like,' young Arthur
countered.
'Oi!' The older man raised his hand to the
youngster. 'Bleedin'--'
'Yes, Arthur, I don't think you should talk to Walter
like that,' I said, as I pushed the older man's hand
down once again. 'But I do hope you're right and not
him.' I smiled. 'What we need now is a spot of good
luck, don't we?'
But we, or rather I, didn't get it. Later on that night,
All Hallows Eve when the fearful dead walk abroad,
Lily's young brother Charlie came to take me to the
forest where his sister's body lay covered with blood. It
was only after I'd seen Lily Lee in death that my story
became for ever connected to that of the Epping Forest
Gypsies.
I left the travellers with the body while I went off to
find one of the Military Policemen. I was a bit
surprised that they weren't already clustered around
Lily - they had seemed to be just about everywhere
the previous day. But when I saw a large group of them
staring downwards only a few hundred yards from
where the Gypsy girl was lying, I learned the truth. If,
however, they hadn't told me that the body on the
ground was that of Sergeant Williams, I would never
have known. What lay there was little more than meat.
'Made a terrible mess of himself,' Captain Mansard
said, with extreme distaste as he gazed down at the
body, whose face had been shot clean off.
'You think he killed himself?' I asked. I was
shocked: Sergeant Williams had seemed far too steady
to do anything like that.
Mansard was a tall man, almost as large as me, but he
still looked down his long, straight nose at a man in a
top hat in the middle of a very dark night. 'The .38
Smith and Wesson still in his hand may provide a clue,'
he responded harshly, as he waved the dull beam from
his torch up and down Williams's body. 'Who the hell.' I told him. I also told him that I hadn't noticed the
revolver in Williams's right hand mainly because I was
too busy looking at the Bowie knife in his left.
Mansard bent down to the knife, then called one of
his men, a Private Jones, to come over.
'You say this Lily girl is dead,' Mansard said, as he
watched Jones examine the knife in the hands of the
corpse.
'Yes,' I said. 'From what I can see her throat was cut.
I imagine whoever killed her used a knife.'
'We mustn't draw what could be incorrect
conclusions, Mr Hancock,' Mansard said. 'There will
have to be a proper investigation into these events.'
'So the civilian police . ..'
'One of my men is already on his way to the police
station,' Mansard said. 'We can't investigate Williams's
death ourselves. I expect the local constabulary will call
in Scotland Yard. The death of a Military Policeman is
not a thing to be taken lightly' He then asked to be
taken to see Lily's body. On the way, I explained to him
what the Gypsies - or, rather, Lily's brother-in-law,
Edward, believed about her death: that it had been
brought about by the angry spirit of her sister, Rosie. I
also pointed out to him the significance of the date: All
Hallows Eve.
'Superstitious rot,' Mansard said, as we pushed our
way through heavy rain-soaked tree branches and cruel
bushes already devoid of their foliage. 'But given the
girl's new-found fame we will have to tread carefully.
What the crowds of gawpers will do without their direct
line to the Virgin Mary, I don't know. Christ, what a
mess!'
'I done it. I killed her,' Edward said, as soon as he
saw Mansard. 'I lied with Lily so Rosie's mulo killed her
on the night when all spirits take their revenge.' He
wept bitterly and very loudly.
'Don't be so bloody stupid,' the captain muttered,
as he pushed roughly past the weeping Gypsy and
made his way to the body. 'The dead can't get up and
walk about, whatever the date may be, you stupid
Aborigine!'
This annoyed me considerably, but I followed him
anyway and, once he was hunkered down beside the
corpse, I lowered my voice and said, 'I think that
someone might have interfered with her. You know,
sexually ...' There was a lot of blood over her crudely
exposed private parts. I remembered what I'd said to
Hannah about her old mate David Green and how
there was never any excuse for rape. There isn't.
Mansard turned to me. Even by the thin light from
his torch I could see that he was extremely pale. 'We'll
wait and see what the civilian police say about that,' he
said. 'It would be foolish to connect this - outrage with
the death of my sergeant.'
'Captain, the girl and Williams - he was attracted to
her...'
'Don't tittle-tattle to me, Mr Hancock,' Mansard
hissed. 'George Williams was a decent fellow. I won't
have gossip. Do you understand?'
I wanted to say something about the knife I'd seen
in Williams's dead hand, but I didn't. He knew I'd seen
it, and I imagined it wouldn't occur to him to interfere
with evidence. I was, in fact, proved wrong in this
regard, but not in the way I had imagined.

I couldn't take charge of Lily's body until after the
doctor the coppers had called had seen her. If he
decided she'd been murdered I'd have to wait still
longer. While the medic, who came from the local
hospital at Whipps Cross, examined the body, I sat with
Mr Lee, Edward and some of the other Gypsy men
outside Mr Lee's tent. From inside came frequent
bouts of sobbing from Mrs Lee and Lily's many
younger brothers and sisters.
Although from time to time Edward tried to raise the
subject of the 'crime' he had committed with Lily, and
the possible appearance of Rosie's unquiet spirit, Mr
Lee cut him off: 'What you and Lily done was wrong,'
he said, to the young man, 'but even if Rosie's mulo did
come it didn't kill Lily - on All Hallows Eve or any
other time. They loved one another. Rosie never killed
Lily. If you're telling the truth, Edward, Rosie let you
lie with Lily when her illness meant she could not do
so any more. Rosie's mulo could not be disquieted
about what it already knew. No, the killing was done by
a human hand. You foreigners, you're that feared of the
world unseen ...'
'But she, Lily, she saw Rosie's mulo.' She told me, our
little lady - it is what we, Lily and me, called Rosie, our
lady, ours ...'
'Lily may have seen Rosie's mulo, but then maybe
she did not,' Mr Lee said, as he sucked hard at his
blackened briar pipe. 'A lot of people have ideas about
what my Lily might have seen.'
But what Edward had said might make sense.
Whatever Lily had seen, she might have interpreted as
a ghost.
It was, I reckoned, about four a.m. by that time and,
because winter was almost upon us, it was still very
dark. But even through the gloom we could see people
moving about beyond the MPs' cordon. There had
been a raid early in the evening on the previous day so
it would have taken a lot of folk a long time to fall
asleep. When Lily died it was possible that quite a
number of people, apart from Williams, were up and
about. As I watched various indistinct figures walk up
and down in front of the Gypsy camp I wondered what
those who had come to the forest for Lily's visions
would make of it once the whole of London knew
that the girl was dead. Would it shake their faith in
the Virgin Lily had seen? Would hundreds, maybe
thousands, descend into despair now that the
connection to the divine had gone?
'Mr Lee,' I said, as I lit up a smoke for myself,
'have the coppers asked you what Lily was doing last
night?'
'Yes, and I told them, honestly,' he replied. 'We put
her tent back up yesterday and after she'd eaten with
us, she went back to it to sleep. She was alone, and that
was the last time we saw her.'
From the space behind the tent I heard the low
growl of Bruno, the bear, waking up. In the comparative
silence of the grieving Gypsy camp it had a
menacing edge.
'What about the Head?' I asked. It seemed barmy to
ask in such a mystical way about something I knew had
to be just another Gypsy bloke - albeit one I had never
seen. But from past experience I knew that they all
wanted to keep the illusion going - or, rather, I hoped
they did. David Green, worthless as he was, had made
me think with his story about the Arab in Alexandria
and his 'real' disembodied head. The memory made
me shudder with superstitious fear.
'Oh, the Head was with her,' Mr Lee said.
'What? In her tent?'
'Yes.'
'So maybe the Head was, or could've been, the last
person to see Lily alive. Have you told the police?'
Mr Lee shook his head. 'The Head ain't of this
world.'
'Yes, but if he, it...' I took my fag out of my mouth
and said, 'Mr Lee, I don't want to upset your beliefs
but the Head isn't real. It is, I know, an illusion.'
I spoke into silence. All of the Gypsies regarded me
with hard, unforgiving eyes. Suddenly I felt very, very
alone.
Mr Lee leaned towards my ear and said, 'Gauje shouldn't talk of what they don't understand, undertaker.
The Head is magic, special magic that came from
far away and settled on my Lily. Now that she has gone,
so has the Head. There is no point in trying to speak to
something that is no longer here.'
I did wonder, and I could have asked, where the
Head might have gone, but I didn't. I couldn't see
anyone who looked like the Head I'd seen in Lily's
tent - I'd never seen anyone like that in the camp.
Maybe the Head was magic, as they'd said, as the
Arab's head had been. But Lily had rested to one side
of the Head, just as the trickster David Green had ...
I was trying to smile to myself about the barminess of
all these thoughts when Captain Mansard came over to
us and crouched next to me.
'Dr Craig would like a word, Hancock,' he said.
Mr Lee, who was sitting next to me, said, 'What is it?
What's going on?'
'Nothing yet,' Mansard replied haughtily.
'Hancock?'
'I won't be long,' I said to Mr Lee.
I stood up and followed Mansard back to the
clearing where Lily's body had been discovered. The
corpse was covered with a tarpaulin. The doctor from
Whipps Cross, a short, red Scotsman, stood at its head.
'The girl was certainly murdered,' he said to me,
without so much as an exchange of normal niceties. 'I
think she may have been violated and then killed, but
I will need to confirm that. The indigent and those in
entertainment were ever vulnerable to such outrages.
I'll have to take her body to the mortuary, if I can find
some space for it. You can't have her yet.'
'You should tell her family,' I said.
'I will also have to take the body of Sergeant
Williams,' the doctor continued. 'I have to see whether
the wound to the girl's throat could have been made by
the knife in his hand.'
I turned to Mansard. 'Do the Gypsies know about
Williams?' I certainly hadn't said anything.
'No,' he replied, 'and nor should they. Sergeant
Williams was a good chap. I don't want his reputation
sullied at this stage. And, besides, if the Gyppos think
one of my men might have been involved there could
be trouble. We all know what these travelling types can
be like.'
'Do we?' I said.
Mansard looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Lazy, dishonest, superstitious and violent covers most
of it. That girl duped thousands up here with her
religious nonsense, and her people have got more than
a few quid off it into the bargain. Williams didn't kill
her any more than some ghost did! If anyone did it was
probably that brother-in-law of hers. By his own
admission he'd slept with the girl. And he's ignorant
enough to expect us to believe in ghosts. Or maybe it
was one of the "faithful" come to camp here from
somewhere down your neck of the woods, Hancock.'
The implication that the killer had to be either an
East-Ender or a Gypsy made me mad. 'Sergeant
Williams had a fancy for young Lily, you know!'
Mansard threw a hand dismissively into the air.
'Absolute rot! Williams has a smashing girl in the
WRNS.'
'Be that as it may,' I said. 'But it isn't just me as
thinks he was sweet on Lily. Ask her father.'
Mansard moved slightly away from me and hooked
one hand into the lanyard across his chest. 'What kind
of person are you, Hancock? A Jew?'
'No.' I didn't say any more than that on the subject.
I thought, Let the bastard guess. 'I'm not against Sergeant
Williams, Captain Mansard,' I continued, 'but someone
wanted something from Lily she wasn't prepared to
give. Sergeant Williams was supposed to have been
sweet on her, but maybe others had ideas of that nature
too. That, or maybe there was another reason that none
of us knows about.'
Mansard frowned. 'What do you mean? What other
'I don't know,' I said. I didn't. The brief conversation
Hannah and I had overheard between Lily and
some man had been too short and indistinct for me to
form any judgement on its meaning. 'But with so many
people, including the Military Police, up here for all
sorts of reasons, anything could have been going on.'
'Well, it will all be checked out in the fullness of time,' Dr Craig put in matter-of-factly. 'Sergeant Ives?'
A middle-aged civilian copper, almost as thin as I
am, came into the clearing and said, 'Doctor?'
'Your men can move this body and the other one
now,' Dr Craig said. 'The sooner we get them to the
hospital the better.'
I turned to Mansard. 'We'll have to tell the girl's
parents,' I said. 'Her mother at least will want to go
with her.'
'To the hospital?' Mansard shook his head.
'Impossible.'
'It's their custom,' I replied, as calmly as I could.
'They mount vigil once a loved one has passed on.'
'Well, they can't mount vigil in a hospital mortuary,'
Mansard said. 'It won't be allowed.'
'Yes, but--'
'There's a war on, Mr Hancock. People can't just do
as they feel. Good God, man, by the time the doctor
gets back to Whipps Cross we could have had another
raid and the whole building might be in flames!' He
put his hand up to his cap and, despite the coldness of
the night, wiped sweat off his brow. 'Come daylight,
somebody, probably me, is going to have to tell all of
these nutcases looking for a miracle that the girl is
dead. We might have riots up here, you know! And I've
got to keep my eye on the Gypsies. So do please
forgive me, Mr Hancock, if I do not unduly trouble
myself with regard to the Gypsies' customs. All of us
have quite enough to do--'
'Oh, for God's sake!' Dr Craig stood away from Lily's
body while the civilian coppers picked it up. 'If a
family member wants to come to the hospital and keep
vigil, that will be fine,' he said. 'If it's the mother, she
will have to sit outside, but. . .' He turned his
hardened gaze on Mansard. '... vigils are important,
Captain.' Then he headed out of the clearing.
Mansard regarded me coldly before he took off after
Dr Craig. This left me alone with Sergeant Ives and the
other civilian coppers, who'd come from their station
down in Walthamstow. One of them, a fat-faced elderly
geezer, said to me, close and confidentially, 'Comes
from the Hebrides, see.'
I frowned.
'Craig,' the copper explained, 'comes from the
Hebrides Islands in Scotland.'
I didn't understand what he meant by this comment
so he said, 'In them islands up there they go in for all
that vigil business, sitting with the body and what have-you.'
Then, by way of explanation, he added, 'Me
mum come from up there, Lewis. When me dad died
some years ago she sat with him, talking for days. My
sister wanted to call out the doctor but I said no,
because I knew it was their way.'
Which, whether the copper was right about Craig's
background or not, was good for the Lee family.
Whatever the reason, at least the doctor had
understood - unlike Captain Mansard. But, then, as he
had said himself he had a pile of trouble of his own
round the corner, which would distract a man from the
niceties of life and death. What would the great crowds
who had come to see Lily after her sighting of the
Virgin Mary make of her death? Would they take it as a
sign that she lacked holiness or would they want to find
and maybe harm whoever had taken Lily's life? And
what of Edward and his story that the love he and Lily
shared had been approved by his dying wife? I
remained with Mr Lee and the other men, including
Edward, until well after sunrise when we - gauje, Gypsies and policemen - found out what those who
had believed in Lily's visions felt about it all.
Chapter Ten

H

' ere, you can have this for your daughter,' the
young woman said, as she placed a red and gold scarf on the ground in front of Mr Lee.
'Go lovely with that red dress Lily wore. She was such
a pretty girl!' She began to sob. 'Whatever are we going
to do without her?'
The Gypsy didn't reply. The woman's gentle
reaction was so unusual.
When Mansard had announced to the crowd that
Lily Lee had died, almost everyone leapt to the
conclusion that she had been murdered. Many had
seen her fit and apparently healthy the day before,
and some had seen the coppers come and go in the
early hours of the morning. When a rumble of fear or
disbelief passes across a big group of people it is truly
terrifying. I can remember hours and days in the
trenches when the blokes around me were so strained
their hands would go for their weapons if you so much
as looked at them in the wrong way. Captain Mansard
sweated heavily as he watched men and women
approach the cordon around the Gypsy camp to find
out more or at least say their bit. Shots, only in
warning but shots nevertheless, were fired.
I heard only snatches of conversations:
'Nazis in the forest done away with her. Them MPs,
they've been looking for Jerries.'
'Holy Mary, Mother of God ...'
'. . . can't have seen the Virgin. If she had, why'd the
Holy Mother let her die?'
'We'll die now, all of us.'
'I still ain't packing up and going back to
Silvertown!'
'If I find who done it I'll...'
Not that this had anything to do with me. I was still
where I was for Lily - the Gypsies wanted to give her
into my care as they had done with her sister. But with
the body, accompanied by the girl's mother, at Whipps
Cross there was little I could do so I made ready to take
my leave of Mr Lee.
'You off to the hospital?' he asked, as I extended my
hand to him.
'Dr Craig will let me know when it's time for Lily to
come to my shop.'
Mr Lee took my hand and shook it. His palm was as
dry and rough as sandpaper. 'I think there's going to be
some trouble,' he said.
'You've got the Military Police to protect you,' I
replied.
He looked at me so knowingly that I was convinced
someone had told him about Sergeant Williams. I was
almost on the point of pressing him when I came to my
senses and said, 'Well, Mr Lee, shall I speak to the
Reverend Sutton about the funeral or do you want to--'
'Give her a good send-off.' He gripped my arm
tightly between his iron hard fingers. 'You will.'
'Yes, of course,' I said. 'I'll do whatever you want. I'll
speak to your wife. She's welcome to stay as last

Not that this was going to be easy. It hadn't been
easy the first time, with Rosie. But now we had Cousin
Stella staying with us, deranged and demented Cousin
Stella. ..
Mr Lee gave me another look, which, this time, was
completely unknowable, then disappeared into his
tent. I can honestly say that at that point I had no idea
what he and his family were going to do next.
I left just before the first person, who was the bloke
I'd met at Rosie's wake, Nobby Clarke, tried to break
through the cordon to get at the tree Lily had stared at
when she had her visions. He'd wanted, he told the MP
who wrestled him to the ground, a souvenir for his
missus. I followed the gentle woman who'd given Mr
Lee her scarf out of the camp and on to the
Snaresbrook Road.
The Duchess had had a bad night with her arthritis and
her cough, and was now confined to her bed. It can be
damp down in Anderson shelters, which is another
reason why I won't have any truck with ours. That the blessed thing makes my mother feel more secure is not
bad in itself, but what it's doing, night after night, to
her poor bones, not to mention her lungs, worries me a
lot. But she was pleased to see me and I spent some
time in her bedroom telling her something of what had
gone on up in Epping Forest the previous night. The
counterpane over her eiderdown was covered with a
thin layer of brown dust. Sometimes when bombs go
off close by, the vibrations from the explosions shake
some of the distemper off the walls and on to whatever
might be below.
'That poor girl!' she said, when I told her of Lily's
death. 'And her poor mother! To bury two children ...
But, Francis, who would want to hurt a young girl like
that?'
'No one knows,' I replied. It wasn't a lie: Dr Craig
hadn't called or sent a message, which meant he was
still examining the two bodies and trying to work out if
or when they'd been together.
'Oh, but the people!' my mother continued. 'The
people who have come, for the miracle ...'
'I think they'll have to go back to where they came
from,' I said. 'You know, Duchess, Lily's visions were--'
'If you are going to say that what Lily saw was not
real you can save your breath,' she said, as she pointed
a finger sternly at me. She coughed. 'You don't know
that.'
'No, I don't. And I wasn't about to say they weren't
real, Duchess,' I said. 'What I was going to say was that,
now Lily is dead, the visions are quite unfathomable. I
believe she saw something--'
'She saw the Virgin Mary.' I looked up and found
myself staring into the face of my cousin Stella, for all
the world a recovered woman. 'Auntie Mary read the
story to me from the Sketch,' she said. 'It's a sign.'
I turned to my mother and said, 'A sign?'
'That Pop is alive!' Stella said joyfully. 'And that the
war's going to come to an end too, of course.'
The Duchess lowered her gaze, then said, 'I read the
story to Stella because I thought she might take
comfort from it. I never dreamed it would do this ...'
'Oh, well,' Stella said, 'I'd better go off and make
a pot of tea. You can have Ovaltine, if you like,
Auntie Mary. Pop'll have tea, of course, and he'll have
my guts for garters if he turns up and there's no cuppa
for him.'
And then, with a truly eerie giggle, she left.
'Uncle Percy's dead,' I said, when I was certain that
Stella was out of earshot. 'I know there's no body as
yet, and as time goes by that becomes less and less
likely, but Percy is dead for all that. He--'
'Yes, I know you've said before about people
vaporising,' the Duchess cut in. 'I'm so sorry, Francis, I
never, ever... If I had known she would interpret
Lily's story as a sign her father was alive I would never
have mentioned it to her.'
'It's all right,' I took one of her hands and made
myself smile. In truth, I was miffed at the way the
Duchess had exposed Stella to what at best must have
been some sort of mental condition in Lily and at worst
a load of, well, God alone knew what. But, then, my
mother is a religious woman so she'd seen no harm in
any of it. 'I'll take a stroll up to the police station later
and ask if they know any more about Uncle Percy.
Maybe they've found something now,' I said.
I wasn't just talking for the sake of it. Sometimes
bodies or parts of bodies don't come to light for days.
And although if a limb or a foot was discovered we
could never be certain it had belonged to Uncle Percy,
at least it'd give me something tangible to bury. Christ
knows I've put less into a coffin and called it Harry,
Mavis or Grace in my time. And if she had a coffin with
Percy's name on it, Stella would have to recognise that
her father had passed away and mourn normally for
him. If Lily's visions had done this to her, when she
had never ever been up to the forest or seen the girl
and her miracles, what they had done to all of the
people actually up round Eagle Pond was something I
recognised as being very powerful. Now that they
knew the Gypsy was dead many disappointed and
unhappy people would soon be dragging their few
possessions back to Canning Town, the Isle of Dogs
and Silvertown. The war wasn't ending for them any
more than it was for heathens like me. But I could have
told them that.
Just before I left her, the Duchess suddenly said,
'Oh, Francis, you don't know where I might buy the
herb called coltsfoot, do you?'
'No.' I frowned. 'Why?'
The Duchess seemed a little sad. 'Well, that young
Lily did say that coltsfoot tea would do my cough good,
remember? I never did take her advice, but perhaps I
should.'
'I'll see if I fall over some of it on my travels,' I said.
'Maybe some of the other Gypsies might be able to
help.' But I didn't think they would. I didn't think I'd
have the opportunity to ask them. I couldn't, after all,
talk about coltsfoot at Lily's funeral, which, I believed
then, would be the last time I saw the Lees and the rest
of the group.

It was just after one when Dr Craig finally called.
'Here, Mr H, it's the telephone!' Doris yelled, as she
ran out into the yard to take me away from car cleaning.
'Quick! Before the line goes! It's a Dr Craig.'
I know that most people don't have a telephone so I
really shouldn't moan, but the line being up one
minute and down the next drives me crackers. You
never know whether someone who said they'd ring you
will be able to and even when you have a line you
never know for how long. I ran inside and whipped the
receiver out of Doris's hands.
'You can come and get Lily Lee now, Mr Hancock,'
Dr Craig said. 'I've concluded my investigations into
her death.'
'Oh, thank you, Doctor,' I said, not even thinking to
ask what his conclusions might be - doctors never tell
you. 'I'll be over to get her presently'
'Good.' And then, unprompted and unexpectedly,
he proved me wrong about his profession when he
added, 'The MP, Sergeant Williams, killed her in my
opinion. But that is just for ourselves and the police.
I'm not telling the Gypsies yet.'
'No.'
'That is the job of the police, God help them,' he
said. 'You know, it's chaos up in the forest as it is, Mr
Hancock. People are demanding to know who is
responsible for the death of the "elect of the Virgin" or
standing in front of that confounded tree and shouting
for Mary to come forth and save them. Wicked,
idolatrous ...'
The line went dead. A lot of Jocks are out-and-out
puritans not at all happy about statues, pictures and
relics. I could only take from this that Dr Craig had to
be one of their number.
I put the receiver back on to the cradle and said to
Doris, 'I'll be taking the motor hearse out in a bit. Betty
Lee'll be back with us for a while.'
Doris, whom I'd told about Lily earlier, frowned.
'Poor lady,' she said. 'Just buried her other girl... I
know some people ain't got too much time for Gyppos,
Mr H, but if you've got any heart you've got to be sorry
for that woman, haven't you?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Yes, you have.'
'Well, we'll all muck in to look after her,' Doris
continued. 'Got to do your bit, ain't you, Mr H?'
This war has made me appreciate how lucky I am to
have people like Doris around me. I'm what some
would call a 'queer fish' and what others would say was
'off his rocker'. But those who are close don't care.
They manage my strangeness without complaint, and
the waifs and strays who cross and sometimes recross
my path.
It took several hours to get up to Whipps Cross. It's
to the north of West Ham, beyond Ley ton, on the edge
of the forest. Normally in a car it's about thirty minutes
away, but as usual half the roads I would normally use
were closed. One reason for that is, there's no way of
knowing where damaged buildings are going to collapse: sometimes they fall into the road. But there
are almost endless other reasons too - burst water
mains, ruptured sewers, unexploded bombs, gas leaks.
Everywhere is covered with rubble and everything
stinks. I try not to sift out the various smells in my
mind most of the time, but some whiffs just get to you
- mainly those associated with my job. As I drove up
through Stratford and into Leyton I thought about
Uncle Percy and the possibility that somewhere,
maybe, a bit of him was stinking to high heaven and
beyond. But I didn't think about him for long, not
once I'd found myself inside the great crowd of what
looked like refugees coming down Leytonstone High Road. Crestfallen and weary, these people carried or
pushed in carts often huge amounts of belongings and
were accompanied by what seemed like hundreds of
children. I didn't recognise anyone but, unless
something particularly bad had happened up in this
part of the city, something along the lines of a huge gas
main rupture, I imagined they had come from the
forest. Some were certainly muddy, while the sadness
and lack of hope on their faces could have been put
there by the ending of their religious dreams. And no
one was speaking. East-Enders rabbit - we're famous
for it. Bombs drop, water goes off, lights snuff out, but
we always talk - even if it's only a load of cobblers. No,
these people were dealing with more and worse than
war. They were suffering from the death of their
hopes.

'Where's Lily's mother?' I asked Dr Craig, when I
eventually got to the hospital and found him in the
corridor outside the mortuary. Betty Lee was usually
very visible as well as audible. But only little Charlie,
Lily's younger brother, was in evidence now. He was
sitting guard over a bag of Lily's clothes, dry-eyed and
silent outside the blood-smeared door to Dr Craig's
mortuary.
The Scot shrugged. 'I've no idea,' he said wearily.
'We've had one of those mornings when we've been
unable to move for the dead. We've taken some from
down by the docks for storage, but we're running out of
space.' He shook his head. 'My job isn't to provide a
storehouse! Ach, the woman probably left early this
morning. The boy's been here watching the raw meat
of war pass by since dawn. Do you have the hearse at
the back?'
'Yes.' I looked over at Charlie, who lowered his head
rather than meet my eyes.
'I'll have my porters make the corpse ready for you
to take,' Dr Craig continued. 'If you go out to your
vehicle...'
'I need a minute to talk to Charlie first,' I said. 'I'd
like to find out who's coming back to the shop with

'If you wish.' The doctor sniffed. 'But whoever it is
had better keep their head down on the journey back.'
He leaned in close to my ear and said, 'You've seen the
crowds on the roads, from the forest?'
'Yes. Took me quite a while to get through.'
'Well, if any of them recognises anyone in your
hearse, or even the vehicle itself, you might have
trouble.'
'I didn't coming here,' I said. 'No one took any
notice of me or the car.'
'Even so, the MPs are saying that some less moral
types have been grabbing "souvenirs" from the Gypsy
camp ever since the girl's death was announced. Care
will be needed. Imagine what they'd do to her body'
I tried not to. People can be beastly sometimes. If
we didn't have this side to human nature there
wouldn't be all the looting that takes place so much of
the time. People wanting to make a quick quid at
someone else's expense or, as in this case, people trying
to hold on to a shred of hope with a lock of hair or a
piece of clothing as a good-luck charm. Yes, it's
ghoulish, but I could understand it. Lily's 'followers'
knew as well as I did what would happen after her
death. The end of a dream - after all the reports of
happy people in the forest - wasn't going to make
either the papers or the wireless. The big tragedies
don't - the direct hits involving hundreds or even
thousands, the end of people's hope. Bad for morale.
'I'm going to recommend we tell people that the
girl's body is to be taken back to the Gypsy camp,' Dr
Craig continued. 'Then the more insane among her
admirers will have a fictional area to focus on. Also, the
MPs will be able to mount guard on the whole camp.'
'That seems sensible,' I said.
'Oh, and I've had Captain Mansard in here,' Dr
Craig said, as he made to leave and then stopped. 'He
won't have it that Williams did away with the girl.'
'Williams was one of his men,' I said, as if that were
explanation in itself.
Dr Craig whispered, 'Mansard thinks that one of the
girl's own, a Gypsy, killed her. He intends, in particular,
to pursue her brother-in-law, who, I believe, has
spoken of having some part in the crime.'
'Edward? The only thing he did wrong was have an
affair with his sister-in-law - with his dying wife's
approval. Doctor, Edward believes that the ghost of his
wife killed Lily,' I said. 'He didn't do it himself!'
'No, Williams did. He didn't assault her, though. In
spite of appearances there was no sexual attack, but he
did kill her.'
'You're sure?'
The doctor fixed me with a stern gaze. 'The knife in
his hand was the murder weapon,' he said. 'That is my
professional opinion.' Then he added coldly, 'When
you've done with the boy, come and remove the
corpse. I can't have it taking up space any longer.'
He went back through the mortuary doors then,
leaving me alone with Charlie. I sat down next to the
boy and watched as a couple of porters carried a
bloodstained stretcher out of the mortuary and down
the corridor towards the outside of the hospital.
'So where's your mum, then, mate?' I asked, once
the pair had passed and the passage was relatively
quiet.
'You got a fag, have you?' Charlie asked.
Like a lot of the Gypsies, the lad didn't have a
clue as to his date of birth. I reckoned him to be about
ten, twelve at the most. But in common with some
of the other kids in the camp I'd seen him smoke
alongside his elders and betters on several occasions.
So I rolled him one up, then held it aloft as a sort of
a bribe while I asked him again where his mum
might be.
'She had to go back,' Charlie said.
'To the camp?'
'Yeah,' but he turned his head away as he said it.
I gave him the fag, which he lit, using a pungent
smelling lighter.
'So you'll come back with your sister and me to the
shop?' I continued.
'She'd be frightened if I didn't,' the boy responded
simply. 'You know.'
I nodded. Of course, alone among the gauje, Lily's
spirit would be in constant discomfort. Whatever she
had done, including sleeping with her sister's husband,
she was still a Romany woman and was deserving of
respect for that, if nothing else.
As if reading my thoughts, Charlie said, 'You know
that Lily and Rosie loved each other, don't you? Lily
wouldn't never have done nothing to hurt Rosie,
nothing Rosie never wanted.'
I'd heard it more woefully, from Edward. 'You're
saying you know about how Rosie and Lily and
Edward had an arrang--'
'I don't believe she saw Rosie's mulo.' Charlie turned
his face full on to mine. 'Don't believe she saw no
Virgin neither.'
'Then what,' I asked, 'do you think she did see,
Charlie?'
'A devil,' he answered. 'There's devils everywhere
now and they kill Romanies and Jews, and they
worship that bloke Hitler.'
'Charlie,' I asked, 'how do you know about such
things?'
Gypsies were not often, in my experience, abreast of
the news and, besides, knowledge about the hounding
of the Jews and the Gypsies in Europe wasn't known to
everyone - it still isn't believed by a lot of people even
now.
'I do a lot of listening,' he said.
'To who?'
'People.'
'What--'
'You do a lot of asking questions for someone who
ain't a copper,' Charlie said.
His face, though not beautiful like those of his
sisters, Rosie and Lily, was handsome in a serious way.
His large, well-made features were more adult in character
than childlike and I wondered whether Charlie
was considerably older than he at first appeared. I also
wondered whether he was as good at play-acting as he
was at avoiding my questions. After all, so far, I'd only
ever looked at Gypsy men in relation to Lily's
mysterious Head illusion.
'Charlie,' I said, 'Lily's Head--'
'Gone. Now she's gone, the Head's gone.'
'Yes, but I think that the Head may have been the
last person to see Lily alive, apart from whoever killed
her
'Head don't know nothing!' Charlie said. 'The
Head's magic. It don't do with things in this world.'
Mr Lee, his father, had said much the same.
With the kid, however, fairly or unfairly, I decided to
push it. 'Oh, come on, Charlie,' I said, 'you're a bright
boy, you must know who did that illusion with your
sister!'
'No, you're wrong.' He turned away quickly.
'What about the Head being a bloke made up to--'
'You don't understand!' He stood up and began to
pace the corridor in an agitated fashion.
I stood, too, and this time I assumed a very serious
air. The boy was obviously disturbed by this part of
the conversation so it was up to me to convince him
that what I was talking about needed saying urgently.
'Listen, Charlie,' I said, 'Captain Mansard of
the Military Police has got some idea about a man of
your people killing your sister. Everyone, especially
your brother-in-law Edward, will need to have what is
called an alibi, someone to vouch for where a person
was at the time of a murder. Now, the Head must have
been with Lily just before she set off into the trees

'I've told you, the Head's gone!' he said. 'I won't
'Charlie, Gypsy men could be arrested!' I said. I'd
taken to heart what Craig had told me about Captain
Mansard and his opinion of the doctor's beliefs about
Sergeant Williams's involvement in Lily's death.
Military types like him are all the same. In the Great
War you got accustomed to it. Officers rarely accept
that their men are involved in crimes or acts against
civilians - it damages their pride too much. Mansard, I
knew, would fight hard to clear Williams and, by
association, his own name too. I also knew that the
truth of what had happened wouldn't matter to him
when the pride of the regiment was at stake.
However, before I could say any more, Charlie fixed
me with his winter black eyes and said, 'That won't
happen. No one will be arrested.'
'But, Charlie,' I said, 'you don't know people like
Captain Mansard.'
'No.' He still held my eyes with his.
Dr Craig put his head round the door then, the noise
of the squeaking hinges breaking the spell between
Charlie's eyes and mine. 'Mr Hancock,' he said sternly,
'can you come now, please?'
I apologised and made Charlie sit in the corridor
while I went to collect Lily. I didn't think it would be
good for him to see her in the state I know bodies can
be in after doctors have investigated a death. As it was,
there wasn't a lot to see, but I loaded the body into a
shell and a couple of Craig's men helped me carry it out
to the hearse. Before I left I asked the doctor what
would be happening now and he told me that that was
up to the civilian police.
'If the MPs don't like it, that's too bad,' Dr Craig
said, as I retrieved Charlie from the corridor and began
to walk with him towards the exit. 'If a man is guilty
he's guilty. No friendship or regimental loyalty can
change that.'
Once outside, Charlie said to me, 'They think
Sergeant Williams killed our Lily, do they?'
'Well
'He never,' the boy said.
I held the passenger door of the hearse open for him,
then went to the driver's side and got in. 'How do you
know that, Charlie?' I asked. 'Do you know who did
kill your sister?'
'No. But it weren't Sergeant Williams.'
I started the engine. 'How do you know?' I said.
'I dunno.' He shrugged. 'Just don't sit right.'
I didn't know exactly what he meant. I couldn't
know precisely what was inside Charlie's head. But
something in what he'd said made me feel uneasy, so
after I'd taken the body back to the shop and settled
Charlie with a plate of Nan's scrag-end stew, I went
over to Plaistow police station. I didn't know whether
the boys over there would have any information about
the investigation into Lily's death, but it was worth
asking and, besides, I still had my own business to
follow up on too.
Chapter Eleven

If we'd found so much as a finger you would've
been the first to know,' Sergeant Hill said, as he
shook his head regretfully. 'I'm sorry, Mr H, but
I think your uncle Percy just disappeared. You know
how it is.'
Yes, I did. As I had always believed, Percy had
vaporised, split into a million million atoms and gone
back into the earth and sky whence he had come.
'Your Stella still in a two and eight about her old
man, is she?'
'Sort of,' I said. 'Although it's different now. She
reckons that the "miracle" up in Epping Forest means
her dad might still be alive.'
Sergeant Hill sighed. 'Poor old Stel,' he said. 'She
must be disappointed about the turn of events up
there.'
'Yes.' It was the perfect lead-in to what I'd really
come to talk about.
I told him how I'd been called out by the Gypsies to
Lily's body and about what was likely to happen now. I
also told him that when I'd returned to the shop with
Charlie Lee I had tried to explain what was happening
to my cousin but without success. 'Stella just skips
about with a soppy grin on her face,' I said. 'Shock's a
funny thing, isn't it? So many people are going to have
problems with this forest business.'
Although the station was quiet, which was a bit
strange in itself, Sergeant Hill took my arm and led me
through into one of the back offices. As he shut the
door behind me he motioned me towards one of the
chairs, then sat down. He offered me a Woodbine and
took one for himself.
'You know a lot of my fellows are up the forest, don't
you?' he said, as he leaned in towards me. 'There's a lot
of trouble.'
'With the Gypsies?'
He looked over one shoulder, then the other. 'Mr H,
this is very hush-hush,' he said. 'People ain't supposed
to know about such things.'
'About what?' I asked.
He pulled his chair so close to me that I could almost
have smoked his fag instead of my own. 'Things bad
for morale,' Sergeant Hill whispered. 'Since this girl
died, there's been violence up there, people wanting to
know who killed her, people threatening to find who it
was and do him in. Not the Gypsies, the bloody gauje.'
Walthamstow and Leyton divisions called on us for
help to calm it all down! No matter what's happened
and who done what to who, the MPs have still got their
job to do. We and, I've heard, some plainclothes from
Scotland Yard have to make sure they can carry on
doing it.' He put a hand on my arm and said, 'But this
is hush-hush, remember. You can't tell no one.'
I understood, all right. No one with an ounce of
intelligence takes at face value everything the
government does or doesn't tell us. Like a lot of people
round here I can remember the official silence back in
September when South Hallsville School in Canning
Town bought it. A direct hit, people killed, hundreds
made homeless, but it was nothing - in the national
news. Here, things were different. Here we watched
the victims carrying on as usual, suffering in silence for
the sake of their pride as well as the sake of their
country. Such events, should they get out, would
destroy morale, so it's thought, and let the Nazis into
people's heads. I'd rather know the truth myself, but
I'm a madman, which means my thoughts cannot be
relied upon.
'What went on up in the forest was a nice little
miracle with a nice little Virgin keeping, thank Christ,
schtum,' Sergeant Hill continued.
'Count your blessings that Lily's Virgin didn't
predict the end of the war or the death of Hitler or
anything, eh?'
'Bloody right!' the policeman said. 'Imagine if she'd
told all them up there to go and march on Downing
Street or something! Don't bear thinking about!' He
shivered. 'But then again, all of them up in the forest
left unsatisfied don't sit that much better. They want
to know why the Virgin come to the girl and what
punishment heaven or whatever is going to pour down
on humanity now that Lily Lee's gone. Don't you go
telling too many people you've got the girl's body up
your place, will you? They'll all be down camped
outside if you're not too careful!'
'I know,' I said. 'Dr Craig up at Whipps Cross
warned me about that. He's going to recommend
people are told the girl's body is going back to the
Gypsies.'
Sergeant Hill looked doubtful. 'Could be trouble
with that,' he said. 'Could have people trying to get
into the Lees' tan - er, their tent.'
'Could be trouble whatever's done.'
'That's true.' He cleared his throat, then asked me
about the funeral and I said, quite honestly, that I
didn't have a clue about when it might take place. I
hadn't seen either of the girl's parents about it yet and
I could hardly ask young Charlie. The only thing I did
know was that the service, in all probability, would be
performed by Ernie Sutton.
'Well, you let me know when it's going to be, won't
you, Mr H?' Sergeant Hill said, as he rose to indicate
that our conversation was over. 'Elaborate dos, Gypsy
funerals. All sorts of traditions have to be kept. Anyway,
we'll need to be there to hold back the crowds we hope
won't turn up.'
'I don't think that the Lees will want people outside
their group ...'
'They might not have much choice,' Sergeant Hill
replied. 'Not if so much as one of them buggers up
Epping gets wind of it. And they will. Things like this
can never be secret, can they?'
He was right, of course: there are few real secrets in
life. Most things unknown are simply suppressed. I
expect that most of London knows about what
happened at South Hallsville School, but I'd lay money
that few ever talk about it. That would make it real,
and a horrible event is much easier as a half-truth. To
face the reality would be painful, and people have
enough of that in their lives as it is. When you don't
have any coal to heat your home in winter and all your
blankets are wet with damp, that's enough for anyone.
I left the police station in a bit of a dream. I'd seen
people leaving Epping Forest earlier and in what
appeared to be good order. But if coppers had been
called up to Epping from this far south, not to mention
from Scotland Yard, then things up there had to be
serious. Hysteria, this time not of a religious kind, was
taking hold ...
'Watch where you're going, for Gawd's sake!'
I came to and found myself staring into a broad,
heavily scarred female face. Mrs Hinton, a proper
street-fighting woman if ever there was, and one of the
'girls' my sister Aggie worked with down at Tate &
Lyle.
'Oh, it's you,' she said, as she recovered herself and
gave me what passes in Mrs Hinton for a smile. I'd
buried her husband, Jack, back in '39 and she'd shown
her gratitude by trying to run me up her stairs to her
bedroom before poor old Jack was even cold. Naturally
I'd been nervous of Mrs Hinton ever since. Now here
she was with one hand inside her green gabardine coat
- at chest height. I prepared to close my eyes.
I raised my hat politely to her. 'Hello, Mrs Hinton.'
'Hello, Frank Hancock.' Her toothless old gums
shone up at me like a row of pink limelights.
Thankfully, she soon closed her gob, then looked
quickly over both shoulders, like Sergeant Hill had
back in the police station. There were scores of people
going about their business before darkness and the
Nazi bombers came. But this didn't seem to deter Mrs
Hinton, who just dug her hand deeper into the top of
her coat.
Christ, I thought, I had enough of a look at what she had
when she chased me up her stairs!
"Ere y'are,' she said, as she pressed a small, still
warm chicken into my hands. 'Get that in yer coat and don't say nothing!'
Now it was my turn to look around wildly, mainly at
the police station behind me.
'Mrs Hinton! If this is knocked off.. .'
'Quick! Put it away, you daft ha'porth,' she said, as
she bundled the brown-feathered chicken under my
coat. 'Course it's knocked off. Who has a chicken for
his dinner, these days?'
'But... you ...'
'Oh, don't worry about me,' she said, with yet
another of her horrible smiles. Then, pulling her coat to
one side, she revealed three more chickens pressed to
her heavily drooping and very bare right breast.
'Bet you don't see one of them every day, do ya?' she
said, as she scurried off down the Barking Road in the
direction of Green Street.
You can call behaviour like hers madness, the result
of a mind gone barmy from the bombing, but it's also
an act of great spirit. Europe is tearing itself apart at the
behest of monsters like Hitler and Mussolini. A person
could easily fall into despair. But while an elderly
woman is prepared to hide knocked-off chickens
against her bare chest, then give one to a man she
fancies outside a police station, there has to be some
hope. At least, that was how I saw it as I chuckled my
way home under the eyes of an equally amused old
constable who, on his way back to the station, had seen
the whole barmy thing.
Even before I opened the door to the shop, I knew that
something was different. In the hours of daylight it's
always noisy out in the street - women trying to get a
bit of shopping before the next raid, newspaper sellers
shouting their smoke-dried bark, encouraging people
to buy papers that will tell them nothing, kids running
about picking up whatever they can find to sell, pawn
or eat. And in the shop, these days, it's rarely silent, as
it used to be in the more peaceful and respectful
twenties and thirties. There's far too much death, far
too many people needed to help me, for that. But as I
pushed open the shop door in what was becoming the
half-light of dusk, all I could hear from within was
silence and all I could see was Doris standing in front
of the candle-lit desk gazing somewhere that I knew I
had never seen her gaze before.
I took my hat off. 'Doris?'
She said nothing. I approached her, but not too closely.
I didn't feel it would be right. 'Doris, what's happened?'
Still she didn't answer.
'Doris?'
And then, suddenly, her eyes met mine, so quickly it
was almost as if she had snapped them into place. 'My
Alfie's dead,' she said baldly.
Although people die suddenly every day, I was
stunned. Alfie was a mate. 'Oh, Doris . ..'
'Midday. There was an unexploded bomb at the
end of our street. Some disposal boys come to blow it
up, but it went off in their faces. They all died. My
Alfie too. The blast was so close, it stopped his heart.
He had a dodgy ticker, as you know.' There wasn't a
tear in her eye, not a crease of grief upon her face. And
yet she was suffering. She had loved her husband,
Alfie. He had worshipped the ground she walked on.
Doris tossed her head backwards and said, 'He's out
the back, if you want to go and have a look. He ain't
got a mark on him.'
I put out a hand to touch her arm, but she flinched
away from me. Alfie Rosen, her husband, had been a
bus conductor. It was well known that he'd had a weak
heart, which had been made worse when his father was
interned. He'd found that time a tremendous strain.
But for Alfie to die from the effects of bomb blast, even
with his weakened heart, was still difficult to take in.
Alfie had been a cheeky, cheerful soul, unlike me, very
full of life. It wasn't fair. It never is.
'The Reverend Silverman says he can bury Alfie up
the cemetery in West Ham tomorrow. Can you do
tomorrow afternoon for my Alfie, Mr H?'
'Doris ...' My eyes stung with tears for Alfie, for
Doris and for this terrible manifestation of ice-cold
grief she was suffering.
'Half past three, the rabbi said,' she continued. 'I
mean, I know I don't have to tell you, Mr H, that
Jewish people have to be buried quick, so I apologise
for hurrying you up like this ...'
'Doris, of course I'll conduct Alfie's funeral!' I said.
'There's nothing in this world that could be more
important than--'
'I'll pay,' she said, raising her small round face to
mine. 'And I'll be back to work the day after--'
'You will not,' I said, as calmly as my rising panic
would allow. I know what we used to call 'shell-shock'
when I see it. 'You will not pay me a farthing and you
will only come back to work when you're fit to do so.
Doris
She backed away from me. 'I don't want no charity!'
she said. Only now did she seem close to tears. 'I don't
want nothing!'
Behind her I could see my mother and Alfie's father, Herschel Rosen, standing just inside the black
curtains at the back of the shop. They looked first at
Doris and then at me, their faces clouded with grief
and concern.
'Doris...'
'No!' She backed to within an inch of my mother's
arm. Then her face screwed up and she shrieked,
'Alfie! I want my Alfie! That's all I want! I don't want
no money or-- Stuff it! Stuff you, Mr H, and your
fucking free funeral and--'
Before she sank to the floor, Herschel and the
Duchess caught her in their arms. The weeping and
the weakness of grief had rendered Doris incapable
and she sat on the floor in the arms of the old people at
the end of all of her strength. She's only a young
woman, Doris, in her early thirties. Alfie, with whom
she hadn't had any nippers, had been her world.
As I bent down to Doris who was now begging my
forgiveness for shouting at me, I put my hand on old
Herschel Rosen's shoulder and said, 'I'm so sorry, Mr
Rosen.'
The old man shrugged.
'Arthur and Walter have laid Alfie out ready for you,
Francis,' the Duchess said.
'Thank you.'
So now I had two bodies to prepare for the grave one
a young girl barely into adulthood and the other a
friend and sometime employee. Alfie Rosen had done
a few good turns bearing for me alongside Arthur and
Walter. I would miss him, but more than that I would
miss the light he had put into Doris's eyes when she
married him. You see so many young widows now girls
with downcast faces and dead eyes. I tried not to
imagine how she would do without him.
As I went through to the back of the shop to see
Alfie Rosen, I saw my cousin Stella cleaning the stair
banisters with beeswax polish, humming cheerily to
herself. Young Charlie Lee, who was at the bottom of
the stairs, was staring at her with ill-disguised
confusion. But Stella was the very image of a complete
basket case. God knows, I understand what that's like,
but suddenly I snapped.
'Stella, you know that Doris's husband has died,
don't you?'
She gazed at me with vacant eyes and smiled. 'Yes,
but the Virgin will make sure he's safe, Francis,' she
said. 'The Virgin will bring Dad back to me eventually.'
I lost my temper. 'Christ Almighty, Stella,' I said,
'the girl that "saw" the Virgin is lying out the back here
awaiting burial, and Uncle Percy is not coming back
here or anywhere else. He's dead!'
There was a tiny pause and then it was as if all the
magic and stories that had sustained her blew off
Stella's face and out of her mind all at once. 'Francis!'
she screamed. 'No!'
'He's dead, you're an orphan, and God, the Virgin
and all the saints are off on a beano to somewhere the
other side of heaven!' I stretched up towards her now
weeping face. 'Because they certainly aren't here, are
they? Because this is hell and those types don't come to
where the devil is, do they?'
'Oh, Francis!' she wept. 'Don't talk like that!
Please!'
I knew I was being cruel and part of me wanted to
be. But poor Stella's face and her ruined dreams
threatened to make me hate myself so I pushed past
Charlie Lee and went out the back to Alfie. Already in
the tailcoat and stiff white shirt he had been married in,
Alfie Rosen lay in the coffin the boys had found for
him, as if he was asleep.
I sat down beside him as I had a hundred times
before and lit a fag. I talked for some time, apologising
for the loss of my wand and other nonsense, before I'd
built up enough courage to take one of his ice-cold
hands in mine and squeeze it, like a mate.
I'd asked Charlie Lee several times without success
about what his parents intended for their Lily. I'd even
telephoned Ernie Sutton to find out if he knew
anything, but he was as clueless as I was.
'We can't keep your sister here for ever, you
know, Charlie,' I said to the boy, after we'd all finished
what had passed for our evening meal. Although
Doris and Herschel Rosen had now been taken
home by Rabbi Silverman, Hancocks was still a
morbid and subdued place to be. Everyone had known
and liked Alfie, and the knowledge that his dead
body lay just one floor below our parlour was not comfortable.
Nobody had so much as glanced at the
chicken I'd got from Mrs Hinton, and that included

Charlie didn't answer. My sister Aggie, however,
who, it has to be admitted, is a sight more forceful than
me, or most men come to that, said to the boy, 'Are you
listening to what my brother's asking you?'
Charlie looked up into Aggie's powdered and rouged
face with undisguised dislike. 'Yeah.'
'Well, why don't you answer him, then?' Aggie said.
'You can see what a hard time we're having here. We've
just lost a good pal.'
'Agnes, the boy has lost his sister,' the Duchess put
in, as she placed a calming hand on Aggie's shoulder.
'Yes, I know, but--' Aggie lit a fag, then sprang to
her feet and agitatedly left the room. 'To bloody hell
with everything!'
We all heard her sobbing as she ran up to her room.
But no one followed her. What she was doing was only
natural. People you know die all the time in war - the
butcher over the road, a cabbie my old dad used to talk
to up on Green Street, some old girl who always got
drunk in the Abbey Arms - and it isn't pleasant. But
when those close pass away, like Uncle Percy, like Alfie
Rosen, it's different. It hurts physically as well as in the
mind. I don't eat, but everybody's different. As Aggie
howled on, we all felt that extra bit depressed as the gas
went down in the parlour when she put her light on up
in her bedroom. But then the fact that we had any gas
at all was, we all knew, a mercy. Ever since the shop
windows had been boarded up, downstairs had only
been bearable when we'd had gas. Otherwise we were
forced to meet our customers and do our business by
candlelight. Even for an undertaker who's seen most
things and believes in little, the shapes and shadows
that candlelight can throw, particularly in a dusty old
place like this, can be unnerving at best. Now, however,
as darkness had fallen some hours ago, we were all
occupied with waiting for the sirens. Alfie was dead and
it hurt, but there was still that feeling of moving on that
one gets after a close death these days. An uncle or
cousin lies dead, but your ears still strain for the wail
that tells you to get down to the shelter or run for your
life. And you do.
But it wasn't the sirens that broke the silence that
hung over my family, Charlie and me that evening. It
was the shop doorbell.
'Who's that?' Nan said, as she always does when
people call after hours.
'Perhaps it's the fire-watchers,' the Duchess said.
'Mr Deeks from the bank and his boys.'
Nan put her knitting on the floor and stood up.
'Well, what would they want?'
'It's a cold night and they'll be out there for hours,'
the Duchess said. 'Maybe some tea or blankets ...'
'Yes, but they bring things with them and that
and--'
'Well, if you don't go to the door, we'll never know,
will we?' I said, through gritted teeth. Like a lot
of East-End women, particularly those of middle age
and beyond, Nan can't half go on about nothing sometimes.
She glared at me before she went down-

A moment later, Charlie said, 'I'd best get down and
be with our Lily.'
'You know that when a raid's on I'm going to
make you go down into our Anderson,' I said. 'No
arguments.'
'Mum said she stayed with Rosie when she was here
and German planes come.'
'Your mum's a grown-up. She can do what she likes,'
I replied.
The Duchess looked at me at crossly. She's always
hated the way I won't go down the shelter with the rest
of them. But she was never in a trench with ten tons of
mud above her head, threatening to bury her alive at
any second. It's not a thing I can tell her too much
about either.
I set about to change the subject back to my original
conversation with the boy. 'Charlie,' I said, 'about
Lily*...'
I was interrupted by the thunderous sound of many
boots running up our stairs. Charlie, alarmed, cast his
eyes around the room as if searching for a way out. But
there is only one door into our parlour so when Captain
Mansard and two of his Military Policemen stood in it
they cut off this exit to all of us.
'Where are your parents, Charlie?' the captain said to
the boy, without so much as a word to me or my
mother. 'Where's Edward?'
'At the camp,' the boy said.
'No, they're not!'
Charlie shrugged.
'Your parents, Edward whatever-his-name-is and
your brothers are nowhere to be found,' Mansard said.
'Your sisters are not exactly forthcoming and Bruno the
bear appears to have been given to some old man with
a wooden leg. What's going on?'
'Maybe Dad's gone on the drom again,' Charlie
replied. 'I don't know.'
'On the drom?. What nonsense is that?' Captain
Mansard reached down towards the boy and said,
'You're coming with us.'
'Drom means on the road,' Charlie said, as he tried to
pull Mansard's hand away from his neckerchief. 'Ow!'
'Er,' I said, 'Captain Mansard, aren't you supposed
to be guarding the Gypsy camp? Aren't you telling
people that Lily's body is there? If they find out it's
here ...'
'The adult Lees have left the campsite,' the captain
said, with what seemed to me a lot of anger in his voice.
'The other Gyppos are still there but the Lees have

'Well, I'm sure they'll be back because of Lily,' I
said. At the same time I tried to catch Charlie's eye but
found I couldn't. That Betty had left her daughter
down at the mortuary had been strange, I'd thought at
the time. Now I was inclined to think that Charlie
might know why that was. However, why any of it was
important to the MPs was beyond me - unless, of
course, Mansard was still intent on clearing Sergeant
Williams's name.
'Captain Mansard,' I said, 'why are you so worried
about the Lees?'
His eyes blazed. 'Why, Hancock, are you asking that
question?'
'Well
He moved in close to me, an action that caused the
Duchess to walk over to my side.
'Our main job up in the forest is to find deserters and
those foreigners attempting to avoid internment,' he
said. 'With regard to the latter, we discovered a couple
called Feldman some days ago, but there is still one
German missing.'
The Gypsy, Martin Stojka.
'And because this "person" is one of their kind, we
understand that some native Gypsies might be helping
him,' he continued. 'The Lees have been in my sights
for some time.'
'But you haven't found this person with them?' I
said.
'No. But my fear is that they have used the tragedy
involving their daughter to cover up this individual's
escape.' He leaned forward. 'Williams didn't kill that
girl. They did, the family, that brother-in-law . ..'
'That's nonsense! Why would the Lees kill their
own daughter?'
'I don't know,' he said hysterically. 'They're Gypsies
- who knows?'
'But Dr Craig has said--'
'Williams was set up by the Gypsies!' Mansard
stared down, wild-eyed, at a very frightened Charlie.
'You're coming with me,' he said. 'You're going to tell
me where your family and Stojka are or I swear--'
'He's only a boy!' the Duchess cried, roused to
anger.
'He's a filthy Gypsy, is what he is!' Mansard said, as
he roughly grabbed one of Charlie's wrists.
'Oi!' I put my hand across Mansard's, an action
greeted by one of his blokes aiming a revolver at my
head.
'Hancock, this is a matter of national security,' Mansard hissed, as he pulled the boy towards him.
'Mr Hancock!' Charlie cried.
I tried to keep a hold on the lad but Mansard
wrenched him out of my grasp.
'Where are you taking him?' I asked, as I watched
the boy being dragged towards the door.
'Mr Hancock, come with me!' Charlie pleaded. 'Let
Mr Hancock come with me!'
'Christ Almighty, boy, I'm only taking you back to
your camp!' Mansard told him.
'Well, let me go with him, then,' I said. The captain
obviously thought that Charlie had information about
the whereabouts of his family and possibly this Martin
Stojka too. I was afraid he wouldn't be too careful about
how he got to it. 'Captain Mansard?'
He turned back to me with cold, hard eyes. 'This is
not a job for a civilian,' he said. 'And we don't need an
undertaker - at least, not yet.'
As the MPs propelled Charlie towards the top of the
stairs, he caught hold of Nan's apron. 'Miss Hancock,
please!'
Nan, who hadn't been comfortable with what she
had seen so far, now reacted to the fear in the boy's
eyes. 'Oh, come on,' she said, 'he's only a kid. Could be
a raid any minute! Where's your Christian hearts?'
Captain Mansard pushed the boy away from her and
said, 'Probably quite near my Christian lungs.' And
then he raised his cap briefly to my sister while his men
picked up Charlie and carried him down the stairs.
The last thing I heard the child say was, 'Mr
Hancock, don't let our Lily be alone, will you?'
Even before I heard the front door of the shop close
behind them I was chastising myself for not having
done more to protect the child. Whether or not
Mansard was right about the Lees shielding Stojka was
immaterial. Charlie was too young to be guilty of
anything beyond doing what adults wanted him to do.
And although I knew that what Mansard was up to had
a point, and was probably quite right, I was worried
about the methods he might use. He obviously didn't
like the 'Gyppos' and would not, I felt, be anything
like gentle with young Charlie or any of the other
Romanies the Lees had left behind to go God alone
knew where.
But within seconds the sirens went, and other
considerations took hold. Stuttering, as I do when a raid
is on, I picked up and took my mother down to the
Anderson in the yard. Closely followed by Nan, we
both called to Aggie, whom we still couldn't hear
moving about up in her bedroom.
'A-A-Ag,' I shouted. 'C-c-c-come ...'
'Agnes!' Nan yelled. 'Get here!'
Our feet made a thundering noise as we pounded
down the stairs, followed after a while by Aggie,
muttering, 'All right, I'm coming, keep your bloody
hair on!'
Once all three, plus Stella, who had been brooding
in the shelter ever since I'd shouted at her earlier, were
settled and I'd satisfied myself that the horses were
securely tethered in the stable, I went back into the
shop as the first set of explosions lit up the sky above
the Royal Docks. All the treasures of the Empire, it is
said, are in those warehouses around those vast bodies
of water. I thought of them on fire - of great hands of
bananas, enormous sacks of sugar and grain, and of the
rats that fed on all that, cracking and screaming and
disappearing for ever into the mouth of the flames. It
made me want to run. Oh, God, did it make me want to

But I didn't. I went into the room at the back of the
shop where Alfie Rosen was now hidden inside his
coffin and where Lily Lee still lay uncovered. There
a gaujo and really not worthy, had a go at batting back
the bad spirits from Lily for Charlie. But the dark
shapes I saw in the corners of the room were familiar
rather than the exotic things I imagined the Romanies
had. They were the endless screams of men whose
heads flew off as soon as they put them over the tops of
the trenches, they were horses' legs cracking under the
weight of the Flanders mud like twigs. They were
things that were devilish because they were so horribly
human.
As the bombing reached its height about an hour
later and the ground shook beneath me in an endless
earthquake, I bent down low over Lily Lee and
whispered, 'I - I w-won't let them g-get you, Lily. Y-y- you will be s-safe with me.'
And then I placed the coffin lid over her lest the
ceiling should come down and damage her.
Chapter Twelve

here is a very sad story associated with the
Jewish cemetery on Buckingham Road, Forest
Gate. Known as the West Ham cemetery, the
site is enhanced by a large, round mausoleum that was
built to take the body of a young woman called Evelina
de Rothschild. Married to Ferdinand, of the famous
banking family, poor Evelina died in childbirth in 1866
and was mourned by her husband for the rest of his life.
The mausoleum is a testament to Ferdinand's grief,
which apparently turned the poor man into a recluse. It
was a rather fitting place for a young and much-loved
person like Alfie Rosen to be interred.
There must have been hundreds of mourners. My
lad Arthur, whose aunt Flo works in the heart of the
Jewish East End at one of the sweat-shops on Fashion
Street, reckoned that almost every tailor and
seamstress in the area had downed tools to come out for Alfie Rosen. At half past three on a winter afternoon,
with Jerries expected any minute, that was quite
something.
Once I'd got Doris, her mum, her sisters and
Herschel Rosen to the cemetery and lowered
Alfie's coffin into the hole, I stood with my lads by
the Rothschild mausoleum. After all, once Rabbi
Silverman began his prayers we'd all be at sea, not
having any grasp on Hebrew. All I knew was that
once it was all over the male congregants would fill
in the grave as opposed to the Christian custom of
paying others to do it for us. The only non-Jews in the
thick of the congregation were my mother and sister
Nan. The Duchess held on to the arm of Doris's
mother, Sadie Mankiewicz, another long-standing
widow like herself. Only Aggie didn't make it, not
because she didn't want to but because she had to
work. If you're in munitions or food production, like
Aggie, that's a reality of your life. Nothing can interrupt
the war effort.
'Poor Doris Mankiewicz,' Hannah whispered into
my ear, when she reached my side to stand next to me.
I looked down at her and said, 'What you doing
here?' My girl knew Doris a bit on account of their both
coming from the same area, and through me, of course.
But with Hannah and things Jewish, there is and
always will be a problem.
'Weren't Sadie Mankiewicz and her family cut me
off when I went with that boy,' she said. 'That was my
parents and the rest of the/rummers. This lot here ain't
like that.'
Hannah's parents were, and always had been, very
religious or /rum Jews so her going off with a Gentile
had effectively separated them from her. Doris and her
people were not religious and therefore not nearly so
scandalised. Alfie Rosen, like a lot of young Jewish
men, had been totally anti-religion, and a considerable
number of his mates in the congregation carried
Communist flags.
While the rabbi did his stuff I watched Doris. White
and, for once, thin-looking, she was being literally held
on her feet by one of her younger sisters. There are no
flowers at Jewish funerals so there's little to look at
except the other mourners - and the awful coffin down
its dreadful hole.
'Doris wants to come back to work tomorrow,' I
whispered to Hannah, 'but I said no.'
Hannah shook her head. 'Well, I wouldn't expect her
to sit shiva, not being/rum, but even so.'
'It's the shock,' I said. 'She can't see any other way
to carry on except the normal one, as if Alfie was still
alive.'
'We put our dead away too quickly,' Hannah said.
'People can't tell whether they're on their heads or
their heels.'
'It's traditional.'
'Yeah,' she said, I thought with some bitterness
in her voice once again. 'Yeah, it's traditional.'
And then the men, starting with a weeping Herschel
Rosen, began to shovel earth on top of Alfie's coffin. It's
a terrible thing to bury your child. My dad, who'd seen
most things in this business in the course of his life,
never got used to it and neither will I. After the oldest
of Doris's brothers-in-law had taken his turn with the
shovel I went over to pay my last respects and gladly
take my place at filling in the grave. Arthur and Walter
did their bit and, as I watched them, I said goodbye and
'Thanks, mate' to Alfie in my head. He'd been a good
sort and as I turned to Doris yet again, that fear for her
future gripped me in the way it had when I'd first been
told of Alfie's death.

I went back briefly to Herschel Rosen's small flat in
Spitalfields for the subdued thing that passes for a
wake among the Jews. But I couldn't stay - or, rather, I
didn't want to - so I left the horse-drawn hearse with
Walter so that he could take the Duchess and Nan
home and made off in the car. Hannah had bade
farewell to everyone at the cemetery but we had
arranged to meet on our own back at the shop. Just
occasionally, usually when someone close to me dies, I
have a need to feel alive again, just for a while. There's
only one way I know of, I'm ashamed to say, that I can
do that. But, then, in my own defence, not just any
woman will do. I have to feel passion. Just to do 'it'
would be disgusting. But that's never the case with
Hannah.
Not daring to go inside the empty home of my
fathers, I took Hannah into my arms in the pitch-black
darkness of the backyard. I began to feel myself
becoming excited when suddenly I heard a voice that
was neither mine nor Hannah's.
'Mr Hancock!' it hissed. 'Mr Hancock!'
It was a child's.
'What is it?' Hannah said, as she felt my body move
away from hers. 'What's wrong?'
Suddenly I felt excited in a different way. 'It's
'Mr Hancock, it's me!'
'Charlie?'
I couldn't see him but the yard was very dark and
Charlie Lee, like me, is a dusky person.
'Yes!'
Two startled eyes came out of the gloom towards

'What's going on?' Hannah asked.
'It's Charlie, Lily the Gypsy's brother,' I said.
'He's--'
'Come out of nowhere at an important time, H,'
Hannah said, a little tetchily, as she smoothed her skin
down towards her knees. I began to wonder, as Charlie
got closer to me, whether I was still disarrayed myself.
But hearing his voice so suddenly had done much to
cool my ardour.
'Charlie, did Captain Mansard let you go or--'
'I run away,' the boy said. Now that he was very
close I could see that his clothes were even more dirty
and torn than usual. He smelt strongly of damp and
earth.
'What about your mum and dad, your brothers?'
Charlie looked quickly at Hannah, then back at me.
'It's all right, Charlie,' I said, 'Hannah, Miss Jacobs,
she's a friend.'
Even through the gloom I could see that he was
giving me a right old-fashioned look. Whether he'd
seen us out together before up in the forest I didn't
know, but I was well acquainted with the fact that
Gypsy boys are rarely little innocents, even at
Charlie's time of life. He'd known what we'd been
. doing.
'So, your mum and dad and your brothers . ..' I
pressed.
'Safe. I see 'em. But I never took that gaujo captain
to 'em,' Charlie said proudly.
'So they're
'Mr Hancock, what the gauje soldiers say about the
Romany from Germany ain't true.'
'Martin Stojka?'
'Sssh! Sssh!' Charlie hissed. 'Don't know who might
be listening!' He lowered his voice still further. 'The
Germans are killing our folk. The Gentleman, as we
call him, he's on the run.'
I didn't know what he meant, really. After all,
whether Stojka was a Nazi or not, he was only to be
interned, as far as I knew. He wouldn't be sent back to
Germany and, as horrible as internment no doubt is, all
this trouble was hardly in proportion to what would
happen to him in the end. I took Charlie and Hannah
inside the shop and made us all a cup of tea. I know it
doesn't solve anything, but I'm a Londoner and
making tea at times of crisis is what we do.
'Mum and Dad have got him hid,' Charlie said, as
he rolled himself a fag on the kitchen table. 'I know
where they is but they ain't told me about the
whereabouts of the Gentleman. The less I know the
better, they say'
Had Mansard been right about the Lees and their
involvement with Stojka all along? I wondered. 'So
why are you here?' I asked, taking in the somewhat
sour expression on Hannah's face.
'They want to get the Gentleman out of the forest
and out of London,' Charlie said. 'A car does it
quickest, my dad says, and you're the only person we
know with one.'
Hannah, who had been shaking her head for some
seconds, said, 'Are you soft in the head, boy? Blimey, if
the MPs are out looking for someone there'll be
roadblocks all over the shop!'
'Dad said you could put the Gentleman in one of
your coffins,' Charlie said to me. 'Only you folk have
H

ii



196
cars as can take body boxes. Them don't get stopped
by the coppers.'
Mr Lee had obviously thought this through without,
however, considering that I might refuse my assistance.
Hannah was right: with the MPs after him, Stojka was
unlikely to get away and if I were to be found with him
I could be tried for treason. 'No, Charlie,' I said, 'I can't
do that. It's far too risky.'
Charlie's face screwed up into a scowl. 'But the
Nazis are after him, Mr Hancock!'
'No, the Military Police--'
'They'm sent by the Nazis, my dad said!'
'But, Charlie, the Nazis aren't here, leastways not

'No, but there's traitors ain't there?' Charlie said.
'Traitors sent them soldiers after our Gentleman!'
'What? Captain Mansard? I know he's not always
very polite, but--'
'He'm a murderer!' Charlie said.
'What?'
'Weren't Sergeant Williams what killed our Lily, it
were him - Captain Mansard,' the boy said.
'Look, Charlie,' I said, 'I don't know what your mum
and dad are doing or what they've said to you, but Dr
Craig told me he was certain that Sergeant Williams
had killed your Lily. I know it's hard to bear because
Sergeant Williams has himself passed on--'
There was real fear in Hannah's eyes as she gazed at
something over my shoulder towards the kitchen door.
I turned and saw my old mate Horatio Smith.
'Hello, Horatio,' I said, then stopped when I saw
what he had in his hands. It was a kukri knife, just like
the one some Gurkha bloke had given my old dad up
in northern India. Where the Gypsy had this one from
or why he had it, I couldn't imagine.
'You're a good man, Mr Hancock, and it would pain
my soul to hurt you, but I will if I must,' Horatio said,
as he stood in the kitchen doorway with the kukri knife
outstretched. 'We need your hearse car for our Romany
brother.'
'Give it to him, H,' Hannah said, her eyes bright
with fear. 'I don't know what any of this is but just give
it to him!'
'If it were that easy we wouldn't've been disturbing
you, Miss. We'd have just took the thing ourselves,'
Horatio said baldly. 'But we don't drive, leastways not
motor cars.'
'Horatio,' I said, 'I don't know what's going on here
so I'm not prepared to drive - at least, not with
Hannah, Miss Jacobs.'
I knew, of course, that despite our many years
acquaintance he would put that kukri up to my neck,1 and he did. Every man's loyalty is greatest when it is to
his own, whatever and whoever that might be.
'I'm sorry and all that,' Horatio said, as he moved the
knife away from my neck, 'but you have to help us. On
your feet now.'
As I stood up I said, 'I just hope you're right about
this Gypsy "brother" of yours not being a Nazi.'
Horatio and Charlie exchanged a look.
'Oh, he ain't no Nazi, Mr Hancock,' Horatio said.
'Can't tell you no more'n that, but he ain't a German, I
can tell you.'
It didn't make me feel any better but at least
whatever I was going to be asked to do was something
I was almost entirely ignorant about. Whether or not
that would save me from a traitor's death, should the
police catch us in the act, I didn't know.
Horatio, standing in front of me, said, 'Let's go.'
I paused to draw breath, and Horatio dropped,
suddenly and dramatically, unconscious to the floor in
front of me.

'Stella!'
When you haven't always lived with people you
don't always remember that they're there. This applies
particularly when said people are a bit barmy.
'He was gonna stab you!' Stella said, as she placed
the large saucepan with which she'd hit Horatio on the
kitchen table. 'I couldn't have that.'
'Stella, thank you,' I said, still shocked at such
violent action from my timid spinster cousin. 'Thank
you very much.'
Hannah, who had rushed over to the Gypsy as soon
as he'd fallen, said, 'Well, he's alive.' She handed me
the kukri, which I put down on the table a long way
from both Horatio and the boy.
Charlie Lee, who was standing behind me, now
looked terrified. 'You won't hand us over to the
coppers, will you, Mr Hancock?' he asked nervously.
Hannah's arms were around Horatio. When our
eyes met she shrugged. I had that feeling I often get
with Hannah that she knew what I was going to say
and agreed with it. 'I want to know everything you
know about this foreign gentleman of yours,' I said. 'If
you tell me the truth I may well help you in spite of
what has happened here tonight. If he isn't a Nazi,
well...'
'I know he's important, the Gentleman, to Romany
people, 'specially those what come from where Mum
come from,' Charlie said. 'I know that if Hitler gets a hold of him again then that's bad.'
I frowned. 'Gets a hold of him again?'
'Shall I put the kettle on now?' Stella said. Of
course, she didn't know anything much, beyond the
death of Lily Lee, about this situation so I had to get
her away from us or vice versa as soon as I could.
'Yes, thanks, Stel,' I said, as I stared fixedly into
Charlie's big, dark eyes. 'Can you get the water from
down in the yard?'
'Oh, is the tap--'
'It's off, love,' I said. 'You'll have to fill up from the
water butt.'
I didn't know whether the water was off or not,
but we do have a butt in the yard for rainwater. Stella
picked up the kettle and left. I said to Charlie,
'Well?'
The boy put his head down. 'The Gentleman was
made to work for Hitler in Germany,' he said. 'Hitler
wants the magic, see, our magic'
'And Mr Stojka gave it to him?' I asked.
Charlie shook his head. 'It weren't like that. Hitler
would've killed the Gentleman's chavies if he hadn't
done what he wanted. Gentleman got them away and
then he ran.'
'So he's here with his children.'
'No, they'm dead,' Charlie said. 'The German
soldiers found them. Mum says that the Gentleman is
the most important Romany in the whole world.'
I heard a groan from the floor.
'I think this mate of yours is starting to wake up,'
Hannah said.
I passed the saucepan Stella had used on him down
to Hannah and said, 'If he starts again, use this.'
She took it from my hand with a frightening smile.
'Gotcha.'
'Charlie?'
'Mr Hancock, I don't know no more,' the boy said.
'All I know is that the Gentleman can't go back to
Germany but that there's people here trying to take
him back there.'
'What people?'
'I dunno. But if the army coppers get their hands on
him he could end up being give over to traitors, so our
dad says. Not saying the coppers is Nazis ...'
'You talked about Captain Mansard ...'
'He killed Lily.'
'You know, I still think I've seen that MP captain
somewhere before,' Hannah said. 'I can't...'
'Yes, love,' I said, not wanting her to go into whether
she might or might not have seen Mansard 'professionally'.
'Charlie, why do you think that Captain
Mansard--'
'Dad told me he done it. Said it had been seen, the
murder. I don't know why the captain done it but Dad
don't lie, leastways not to our people.' That was
something I understood to be true, that Gypsies don't
generally lie to their own, unless Charlie was lying to
me. But I didn't think he was. After all, to rope a settled
Gypsy like Horatio into such an adventure as the one
proposed meant that whatever was going on had to be
important. But 'magic', just like 'miracle', is not an easy
word for me to take seriously, and these Gypsies had
used both in the past few weeks.
'Charlie,' I said, 'if I did help you, I'd be taking an
awful risk.'
'Mr Hancock,' Charlie said, 'if Hitler gets a hold of
our Gentleman there ain't no hope for none of us.
That's what my dad says. If he gets hold of our
Gentleman the Germans'll win. We have to get him out
of London. We have to.'
So that was my mind made up for me.
Chapter Thirteen

I'd wondered how Horatio had imagined I'd be
able to drive around completely unnoticed for some time. But when he told me it was obvious
- just wait for a raid to begin. In the meantime I
thought about the Duchess and Nan and why they
weren't home yet. If Walter brought them through on
the hearse into the yard, as he probably would to stable
the horses, I didn't know what I would say. But as soon
as the sirens started up we all, with the exception of
Stella, got into the car and set off. I didn't, I confess,
say much to Stella about what was going on, except
that she was to tell my mum not to worry. A stupid
thing to say at the beginning of a raid, I knew.
Beyond thinking we were mad to be out and about,
no one would bother us during a raid - or, rather,
that was what I and Horatio thought. The Gypsy, who
was now conscious but with a sore head, told me to
drive as if we were going back to Eagle Pond. But
just as I drove on to Leytonstone High Road there
was a massive explosion down by the railway lines and
a copper came out of nowhere to tell me to pull the car
off the road and 'get under bleedin' cover, you daft
bastard!'.
I said, 'I'll - I'll just g-g-go up a bit. I've r-r-relatives
up further.'
I saw him struggle to understand my stutter,
but then he said, 'Okey-doke, mate, whatever you
say. Just keep your head down,' and off we went
again.
Although we did go north, we didn't go anywhere
near to the encampment at Eagle Pond. Where we went, away from what wasn't, on this occasion, a heavy
bombardment of the docks, was a far deeper and
denser part of the forest. It's difficult enough to see
your way driving in the blackout - the covers you have
to have on your headlights don't so much lessen the
light as block it out completely - but among trees and
in what is really the country, it's almost impossible to
see anything. Without Horatio telling me left then
right then forwards and so on, I would probably have
ended up, accidentally, of course, putting the poor
Lancia into a ditch. But he and Charlie knew where
they were going and eventually I was told to stop and
get out.
'You wait here with the lady and we'll be back
presently with our Gentleman,' Horatio said, as he and
Charlie trudged off into nothing short of endless
blackness.
When they'd both gone, I put an arm around
Hannah's shoulders and whispered in her ear, 'I wish I
knew exactly what this is really about. All this talk
about Hitler and magic .. .'
'I wish I knew why you're whispering,' Hannah
replied, in a normal voice. 'Middle of bleedin' nowhere
here. Christ knows where we are!'
'Horatio and Charlie know,' I said.
'Oh, well, that's just fine, then, isn't it?'
'Hannah.'
'Well,' she said, 'load of old mumbo-jumbo.'
'I don't know,' I said, and I didn't. But, then, who
does? We see things like Lily Lee's Head and assume
it's an illusion. But we, or at least some of us, see that
same girl talking to thin air that she calls Our Lady and
we see God Almighty.
'I know that some people say the Gypsies have
special powers,' I said, 'but I wouldn't have thought
that old Adolf would have been much impressed.
Strikes me he has nothing but disregard for anyone
who's not a German.'
Hannah shook her head. 'I don't hear much, not
where I am now,' she said, referring to her present
place in Canning Town, 'but when I do see Yiddisher
people they all tell the same story.'
'What's that?'
'That Hitler don't just hate the Jews, he wants what
they have too. And I don't mean their houses and
businesses and suchlike. He wants what the old rabbis
and the /rummers know about God and religion and
that. He wants our... All right, I know I said mumbo
jumbo, but he wants our "magic", if you like. I'm not
talking about what Davy Green does neither. I don't
rightly know what I am talking about, but some of the
old /rummers could, it's said, do impossible things. My
parents brought me up on such stories.'
'Oh, yes,' I said. 'My dad told me a story about some
rabbi who walked through a wall - in Poland, I think it
was. And the Gypsies ...'
'They're also supposed to be able to do things other
people can't too,' Hannah said. 'Still bloody mumbo
jumbo, in my opinion. But Adolf's greedy, I think. He
wants to be able to do everything, he does.'
'Well, I s'pose if you're trying to conquer Europe
you have to take all the help you can get,' I said.
It was a light reply, and Hannah didn't much like it.
'You know he's killing people and we ain't doing
nothing?'
'We're at war with Germany, Hannah,' I said.
'H, Jews and maybe Gypsies, too, were dying for a
long time before this country decided to give Adolf
Hitler what-for. People who got out, them in the
internment camps, them like the Feldmans, they'll tell
you.' She paused briefly to light a fag, then said, 'I may
not believe in magical mumbo-jumbo meself but if
wanting it makes Hitler kill people it needs to be kept
away from him.'
'So you think I was right to help Charlie and
Horatio and this Gentleman - this Stojka bloke - of
theirs?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'Not really. But if you
believe them, H ...'
Suddenly through the deep black undergrowth
Horatio returned with a bloke I recognised walking in
front of him. Even in the gloom and without the
makeup I could tell - I never forget a face, living or
dead. He didn't look a bit like the photograph Sergeant
Williams had shown me.
'Hello, Django,' I said to the man, who had once
been known as the Head.
Martin Stojka smiled and said, 'You, Mr Hancock,
are doing much more for this war than you will ever
know.'

An owl hooted in one of the great trees over our heads.
Owls are messengers of death, some say.
'I want some answers before I go anywhere,' I said.
Martin Stojka smiled his enigmatic Head smile. He was thin - not like me: thin as if he'd been starved.
'Then maybe I will drive the car myself,' he replied, as
he pulled open the driver's door. Then, after a
moment's pause, he shut it again and laughed. 'But I
don't drive, do I? I had a car, once, but I had a driver
too. The Fuhrer was very generous to me - in a way.'
He was a good-looking bloke in what Aggie would
have called a 'foreign' way. Like me, he was very dark
with a sallow face and long, slender nose. But he was
also, as so many Gypsies are, much shorter than the average man. I reckon he had to be five feet three at
most.
'We need to get on, Mr Hancock,' Horatio said. 'We
don't know where the coppers might be.'
'I need to know where we're going and why,' I said.
'Get in the car, Mr Hancock. Please.'
'Horatio...'
'Bloody hell, it isn't half brass monkeys out
here!* Hannah said, as she threw her fag down on to
the ground, then rubbed her hands together for
warmth. 'Why don't you fellas do your talking in the
car, eh?'
I looked down at her, frowning. Suddenly her
attitude seemed far too casual in this situation.
'Don't have to drive yet, do you?' she said.
And, as usual, she was right. She was also, from the
look I now saw in her eyes, playing for time on my
behalf. She didn't trust anyone or anything any more
than I did. We got into the car with Martin Stojka
sitting beside me at the front. In profile he reminded
me again of myself or, rather, of my mother. It's easy to
see the Indian connection in some of the Gypsies, like
this bloke. But it wasn't India he talked to me about
now: it was Germany.
'My family have been settled in the city of Berlin for
three generations,' he said, as he took, with a nod, the
Woodbine I offered him. 'I have had education I
speak English, as you see - and I was, like my father,
a maker of jewellery. Stojka is well-known jewellery
shop. Very creative Roma people - what you call
Romany or Gypsy, we say Roma - making fabulous
things for big Jewish bankers, for generals, for the
wife of the Kaiser.' He laughed. 'And also for rich
Roma families, "aristocrats" from Rumania and
Constantinople. Because Stojka, although in the gauje world, has never been of the gauje world. Pure Roma
every one of us and something else too,' he leaned in
closely towards me, 'something special.'
I felt all of the hairs on the back of my neck stand
up. Something rustled in the trees outside but I - like
Hannah behind me, I later discovered - was mesmerised
by this man with his guttural accent and deep,
very wide eyes. And I do mean mesmerised. I'd never
been in what you'd call a trance before and I haven't
been in one since, but those few moments with Martin
Stojka were, I swear, genuinely strange.
'The family Stojka are guardians of the Fourth Nail,'
the Gypsy said. 'My father, my mother, my brothers
and my wife all died before I would show it to Hitler he
so wanted it - but with my children ...' His eyes
filled with tears, he put his head into his hands and
began to sob. Released from his gaze, I felt myself
again and, even though I didn't know what he was
going on about, I made as if to touch him in sympathy.
But Horatio tapped my shoulder and said, 'Best drive on, I think, Mr Hancock.' He looked at Stojka
as he spoke and I wondered, from the strain on his
face, whether Horatio felt the Gentleman had said
too much.
As I turned the key in the ignition I remembered
something that, if Stojka really was a fugitive from
whatever, had to be important. 'I thought you
wanted Mr Stojka to get into that coffin,' I replied,
pointing to the shell we'd loaded into the hearse at the
shop.
'We can do that once we're out of the woods,'
Horatio said.
'Yes, but where--
'Just get back on to the road and then we'll see.'
'I showed him, Hitler, the Fourth Nail. I showed
him in return for the lives of my children,' Stojka said,
as he raised his head and stared at me with his wild,
violent eyes. I looked away. 'But he didn't touch it. I
told him, "Later", I would let him touch it later. He
believed me for a while.'
I was about to put the car into gear but I was too
distracted now by what this man had said. I didn't have
a clue what he was talking about and I said so. 'You've
lost me, pal,' I said. 'I don't know what you're going on
about.'
Martin Stojka sighed. 'You know it is said that when
Christ was crucified one of our people fashioned the
nails that held him to the cross?'
'You, or rather the Head, told me something about
that,' I said. 'In Lily's tent.'
'It's not true.'
So what was all this about some important nail then,
I thought, and why was it the fourth that was so
special?
Martin Stojka had an answer, of sorts. 'But what is
true is that a Roma brother long ago took one of the
nails when the Saviour was brought down from the
cross,' he said. 'It was the only one not used to nail
Christ to the tree. It lay at his feet, bleeding his own
blood for the shame of its fellows used to kill him. The
Nail is power. It bleeds with the blood of God and it
can do anything in this world and in others. And that
Roma brother who took it, he was my ancestor, and that
is why I have that Nail to this day.'
'You have a nail from the Crucifixion?'
'Yes. If you remember in Lily's tent,.that day again,
Mr Hancock, the Head raised the words the "Fourth
Nail" to your charming mother.'
I did remember now and I looked at Stojka
sharply.
'It is a very holy thing,' Stojka said. 'Truly so.'
I felt myself shudder. Years before, I'd taken Nan
and the Duchess up to Westminster Cathedral to see
some relic or other paraded for the faithful. I'd stood
outside having a fag. But the women had been
impressed - Catholic, superstitious women. Now here
I was in the middle of the night with a dodgy Gypsy
bloke and, apparently, another bit of superstitious junk
that had not one iota of meaning for me. Suddenly I
felt angry. I turned to Horatio and said, 'You brought
me out here to rescue a fucking holy relic?'
'Mr--'
'H, calm down!' Hannah said. 'Hear this Mr
Wotsisname out. Remember what I said about Hitler
and what people say about magic'
'The lady is right. Hitler is very interested in magic,'
Stojka said. 'I know, Mr Hancock, that to you this
seems stupid. But Hitler is wanting everything - bones
of saints, books of spells, the Holy Grail and the Fourth
Nail of Christ. The Nail can be used to get power, it is
said. Hitler wants power over everything. Roma people
do not want power, which is why we keep it. But then
comes Hitler. He has these people, magicians they call
themselves. They want to do spells on the Nail, they
take my children--'
'Mr Stojka--'
'No, listen to me!' He raised a hand. 'If Hitler gets
the Nail it will give him even more power! When I ran
away from Berlin and took the Nail with me, he sent
men for my children and he killed them! My heart is
dead!' His eyes shone with tears and grief. 'But I
cannot give up the Nail to him or any of his people. I

'What sort of power does it have, this Nail?' I said,
not really believing any of it but asking anyway. 'What
do you mean?'
Stojka sighed, as if defeated. 'I do not know,' he said.
'As with all holy relics it has to be made to work so if
you do nothing with it it will do nothing. I am not
worthy of its power, no man is. Mortal people can only
use it badly because we are all in sin. It bleeds only. It
is always covered with blood.'
His face was so devastated - which a man's face
would be if all his family had been murdered - that I
put what I felt to one side and took the handbrake off.
His eternally bleeding nail didn't have to be 'genuine'
for either him to protect it or Hitler to want it. After all,
if the Lees, and principally Lily, had taken the trouble
to hide this bloke inside an illusion, what he represented
had to be important to them. The car rolled
forwards into the darkness.
'And the Lee family?' I asked. 'How do you know
them?'
'I escaped to Britain,' Stojka said. 'I went to
Whitechapel, London. Then I hear, the Jews say, that
the British are looking for me. All Germans are to be
interned in prison camps. I am a German with German
papers. Everyone is looking for me, I think! I run, I
don't know where. I want to find Roma people.'
'How did you end up in the forest?' I asked.
'I heard of a fair there. I thought, If my people are
anywhere they will be at the fair. I meet Zinaida Betty
Lee. She speaks the same Roma language as me.
She knows who I am, what I am, what I have. All her
group are excited and afraid. She takes me to Lily and
the husband of her sister, another Roma from Europe.
They were performing this illusion with the Head.'
'So you took over from Edward.'
'Not quickly, no,' he said. 'I just hide. Only when
the Military Police come looking for me do I do the
Head. To hide where all the world can see. It is Lily's
idea. She was a good magician.'
When he'd spoken about the nails of Christ to me
and the Duchess back in Lily's tent, he'd taken what I
felt had to have been a stupid risk. I told him this and
then I said, 'That was a bit reckless of you, wasn't it?'
He smiled. 'Undertakers and priests do not talk,' he
said. 'Only to the dead.'
I wanted to ask him whether, in the case of priests,
he included God and the saints in 'the dead'. But this
nail he claimed to have was of God so he couldn't not
believe in God's existence, or so I felt.
'You know they only want to intern you,' I said. 'Put
you in a camp for a bit. It isn't pleasant, but you do get
fed and attended to if you're ill.'
From behind I heard Hannah sniff in disgust. Using
the word 'only' with 'internment' is like swearing to
her, and she does have a point. But it isn't as if internment
means death.
'They want to kill me,' Stojka said. 'Whether here or
back in Germany, they want my blood. Hitler, he wants
to take the Nail and use its power. Because I run away
he will kill me. He has people here to kill me. You have
to believe it!'
'Who do you mean? The MPs?' I knew the word
'spy' had been mentioned by Sergeant Hill in
reference to Stojka, but as far as I was concerned, the
Gypsy was being sought with a view to his being
interned, not executed. And, anyway, even if I were to
believe every word that Stojka said, I couldn't think it
possible that people over here would kill him.
I peered into the darkness ahead. It seemed as if I'd
been driving for a lot longer than it had taken me to get
from that track Horatio had called a road to wherever it
was we'd ended up taking Martin Stojka on board.
'The captain of the Military Police killed Lily
because she would not tell him where I was,' Stojka
said.
'No. Sergeant Williams--'
'I saw it happen.'
So it was from Stojka - or, rather, from him via Mr
Lee - that Charlie had got that story. I turned to Stojka,
whose face was blank now.
'And you didn't help her?' I said. 'She helped you.'
'I saw only the end. I heard some voices. I ran over
towards them. He stabbed her, she was dead, there was
nothing I could do. I ran away'
'Nothing you could do?' Hannah, who has strong
views about violence to women, sounded more than
displeased. 'Too busy protecting that bleedin' nail was
you?'
I looked all around me and realised I didn't
recognise anything.
Suddenly Martin Stojka exploded with rage. 'These 1 policemen will take me to people who will either kill
me themselves or send me back to Germany! They will
not intern me! They will take the Nail! Hitler will use
it, something that is ours, to give himself more power!'
He turned to me again and said, 'You do not believe
this, do you? You are going to give me to the police!'
Tired, confused and still suffering, if I'm honest,
from the recent death of Alfie Rosen, I put the brake
on, turned the engine off and spoke to a nervous
looking Horatio: 'I don't know where I am and I don't
think you do either,' I said. And then I said to
Stojka, 'As for you, I don't know what to believe. You
and your lot say one thing, the police and the MPs say
another--'
'They are not telling you the truth!'
'So you say,' I said. 'Show us this nail and--'
'The Nail is not something people can just ask to
see. You must do so with prayer, with pure things in
your heart.'
I wasn't believing this bloke any more. It was all
beginning to sound like so much tosh. But suddenly it
was Hannah who spotted the light behind us first we
were all in a much more dangerous situation than I
had ever imagined.
Chapter Fourteen

Captain Mansard had only three of his blokes with
him, but they were all armed so the Lee family,
who with Edward and the three young boys
numbered six all told, were very much at their mercy.
Betty Lee and the younger of Charlie's two older
brothers cried and shook with fear as Mansard and his
men drove the family roughly in front of them.
'Ah, Mr Stojka,' Mansard said, as he put his head
into the car with a brief smile in my direction. 'Want to
ask your passengers to get out, Hancock?'
I didn't know whether I was relieved to see him or
not, but I did as he said and Stojka, Horatio and Hannah
got out and stood with me to the side of the vehicle.
'Well, I don't know what you're doing all the way out
here in a hearse in the middle of the night, Hancock,'
Mansard said, 'but if you were, as I believe, trying to
assist Mr Stojka's escape, I should tell you I take a dim
I said nothing.
'Assisting a Nazi spy is a treasonable offence,' he
said to me. 'You could hang for it.'
'The Gentleman is not no Nazi!' Betty Lee
screamed. 'You know what he is!'
Mansard tipped his head at one of his men, who
smacked poor Betty's face with the butt of his rifle. It
was to me an over-use of force and something that
would have outraged even the most hardened soldiers.
'Steady on!' I said, while Hannah shouted, 'Oi!'
Mansard turned his full and violent attention on my
girl and said, 'Shut your filthy mouth before I shut it for

There was something almost personal in his outburst
and I said, 'You'll do no such thing!' as I attempted to
put myself between him and Hannah. 'My ladyfriend
hasn't done anything except come along with me. She
knows nothing about any of this!'
'This being?' he snapped nastily.
'Well, this situation, with Mr--'
'Assisting a Nazi--'
'Mr Stojka is only a German citizen, as far as I know,'
I said. 'You can say I assisted someone in avoiding
internment, if you like, but him being a Nazi is not
something I know anything about.'
Mansard shrugged, then leaned up against a tree and
lit a cigarette. 'If you're telling the truth, maybe that
could change things,' he said. 'I don't know what stories
he has told you but I imagine that, true to his...
inclinations, he was quite persuasive.'
Whether he meant Stojka's inclinations as a Gypsy
or as a Nazi, I didn't know. I looked across at Hannah
who didn't see me, her still furious eyes firmly fixed on
Captain Mansard's face.
'Well, whatever Mr Stojka may or may not be, I
think you should let Horatio and the Lee family alone,'
I said. 'They did what they did because they thought it
was right.'
'Came out with some poppycock about being a poor
refugee, did he?'
I didn't answer. I didn't know exactly what Stojka
had said to the Lees and I didn't want to talk about my
own recent conversation with him. I'd had enough
chats about strange and impossible things over the
previous few weeks to last me a lifetime.
'I saw you kill Lily Lee,' Stojka said to Mansard.
'You and this other man.' He looked over at the
captain's sergeant.
'What utter tosh!' Mansard laughed. 'Although it
pains me I have to accept Dr Craig's opinion that
Williams did it. I didn't want to accept it, but--'
'But you know that is not true.'
Under cover of his three men's pistols, Mansard
moved in on Stojka. 'Williams was besotted with the
girl, I don't know why. He had a lovely girl in the
WRNS. But, anyway, he raped this Lily. Williams's
fingers were curled around the knife that was used to
kill her afterwards.'
'Because you put it there,' Stojka said, 'after you and
your man murder him. I saw you.'
I felt my heart jump in my chest. Mansard had killed
Williams? Why?
Mansard crossed his arms over his chest. He didn't
seem in the least upset by any of this. 'And why did I do
that, Mr Stojka?' he said, echoing precisely my own
thoughts. 'I liked Williams. He was one of my chaps,
totally loyal. And anyway, if you saw me commit all these
crimes why didn't you try to stop me?'
'Sergeant Williams did not just like Lily Lee, he
understood her heart,' Stojka said. 'For a time he knew,
she knows something about me, but she would not tell.
She told him she could not answer his questions and he
respected her because he loved her. But he believed
your lies about me. He believed you almost up until
the time you killed her.'
'Oh, when the scales fell from his eyes?'
'He did not know you were a bad man at first but
then he did find out and he dies for that.'
But Lily Lee, I remembered Dr Craig saying, had
not been assaulted. It had just looked as though she
had. The Lees as a group began to get restless. Charlie,
afraid but wanting to get closer to Stojka, moved
towards him.
'Get back, you little bastard!' One of Mansard's
blokes poked Charlie's chest with the butt of his pistol.
The other two watched the rest of the family nervously.
'Leave him alone!' Hannah cried.
'I've told you before!' Mansard screamed. 'Shut up!'
'He killed my daughter, Mr Undertaker!' Mr Lee
pointed at Mansard. 'He wants to know where our
German Gentleman is so that he can take the Nail
away from him! He's working for Hitler! Prob'ly going
to give the Nail to some bloke high up to take it to
Germany. These Nazis, they all work together! The
Nail has so much power--'
'Christ Almighty, not this again!' Mansard said. And
then, turning to me, he continued, 'Did any of them
tell you their silly story, Hancock?'
I gazed at him as blankly as I could.
'About their sacred nail? The one the ancestors of
this rabble supposedly stole from the site of the
crucifixion? God, what a load of tosh! Only Gyppos
would boast about stealing anything. Not shown it to
you, I suppose, has he?' Again I didn't respond. 'No.
Well, something that doesn't exist can't be seen, can
it? Everything about this man is a lie! If he saw me kill
both the girl and Williams, why didn't he do anything
about that, eh? With his miracle-working nail why am
I still alive?'
'The Nail is powerful. My first duty is to protect it
always! You know nothing of it. I cannot show it--'
'Oh, Mr Stojka - or Django the Head, as we now
know you were - you and Lily Lee made quite a pair,
didn't you? She saw the Virgin Mary and you live with
the nail that bleeds for Jesus Christ! God Almighty, if
you hadn't made such a fool of me with your tatty little
fairground illusion I might have let you avoid internment.
You are pathetic! Like Williams, like all of these
pitiful Gypsies here. Or, rather, you would be if you
were not working for the Third Reich, Mr Stojka.' He
paused, then looked directly at me. 'You have to ask
yourself what a German national is doing in this
country, don't you? Hiding out, disguising himself...
Our friend here may well end up being interned but he
will be questioned about his activities first - at some
length.'
The Gypsy looked at the ground and I thought I
caught guilt on his face. I had started to believe him
but.. . but this made me unsure yet again.
'Mr Stojka?' I asked.
He looked up at me with violent eyes. 'Believe what
you like,' he said, 'I do not care!'
'If there were more of us I'd offer to escort you back
in your vehicle, Hancock,' Mansard said, as he took
Stojka's arm. 'But as it is .. .'
'I thought you'd want to do us for aiding someone
you believe to be a Nazi,' I said. 'You said yourself I
could hang for such a thing.'
'I'm feeling generous and you're not a bad chap. It's
easy to be taken in by these exotic types.'
And I was, I admit, ready to take his kind 'offer'.
There I was, in the middle of the night with my
ladyfriend in Epping Forest and a suspected Nazi
sympathiser- it didn't look healthy. But suddenly I was
being given a way out. There is a coward in me as well
as a man who just wants to protect his lady.
And thank God for that lady, who pointed at
Mansard and said, 'Now I fucking know where I've
seen you before!'

'You pushed me into the road, you bastard!' she said.
'You and all your Fascist mates!' Even through the
night-time gloom I could see that Hannah's face was
distorted with rage.
For once, Mansard did not respond to Hannah's
outburst by shouting. 'I don't know what you mean,' he
said quietly, as he passed Stojka to one of his other chaps and attempted to take Hannah to one side. She
shoved him away from her.
'Brick Lane,' she said. 'Nineteen thirty-four. You
and your pals pushed me in the road, nearly under a
car! I've never forgotten it. You pushed your face right
into mine and then you called me a Yiddish pig!'

'I think you're mistaken--'
'I thought I knew you and now I know I do! Them
days are burned into my brain.'
There was a moment of silence.
'Hannah,' I said, 'what's going on?'
She turned to me, but Mansard pulled her face
around to his once again. 'You're--'
She spat at him, full in the face. 'He's a Fascist, H,'
she yelled. 'Him and his mates all in black shirts,
following that bastard Mosley!'
He slapped her hard across the mouth. Mr Lee and
I sprang forwards in her defence. The sound of guns
being turned against us brought us both to a standstill.
'They used to come down to our manor terrifying
poor Jews, right up until we kicked them out in 'thirty
six when the whole East End stood up to Mosley in
Cable Street,' Hannah said, as she wiped blood away
from her mouth. 'I'd gone back to see if my mum and
dad were still alive, if someone like him hadn't thrown
them through a shop window!'
'Shut up!'
Hannah had reckoned she'd recognised Mansard
some time before. But I'd given it little thought apart,
of course, from wondering whether he'd been a
customer of hers. I was relieved he hadn't, but I was
frightened too. Mr Lee had given his opinion that
Mansard was working for someone higher up who
wanted to get hold of Stojka and his nail. And now, if
Mansard was or had been one of Mosley's Blackshirts,
there was a possibility that he and the three lads he
had with him were doing that job directly for Adolf
Hitler. There was something else to take into account
too, something about Hannah.
'Hancock?' Mansard raised a questioning eyebrow.
He began to appeal, I felt, to my good sense. 'Are you
going to take this "lady" out of the forest? I suggest
that's for the best. What do you think?'
'The problem I have, Captain Mansard,' I said, 'is
that Hannah doesn't lie. She doesn't get on with her
mum and dad, and if she went back to Spitalfields it
must have been for a serious reason. I remember all
that trouble back in the thirties, and nineteen thirty
four was the height of it, Blackshirts everywhere.
Hannah said you were a Blackshirt then.'
'If I had been a Blackshirt, how the hell would I
have got into the MPs? God! Do use your intelligence!'
'I don't know how Mr Stojka got here from
Germany,' I said. 'Seems like a bit of a miracle to me,
but he did it.'
'He's here because he's one of their fucking agents,
as I told you!' Mansard yelled.
I looked at Martin Stojka, the Head, the keeper of
the Nail of Christ or whatever it was. He was dirty,
cowed and breathing heavily through fear. His story was
ridiculous and he could easily have been a Nazi spy. But
just as I knew that Hannah was telling the truth about
Mansard, I knew that Stojka, whatever he might be, was
no Nazi spy. After all Sergeant Williams had had no
reason to kill Lily Lee, and I couldn't accept that the
spirit of the girl's dead sister had done it.
'Hitler wants to kill all of our people,' Martin Stojka
said softly, to me. 'He wants our secrets and then our
deaths.'
Mansard turned his gun on him.
The other three men positioned themselves, two in
front and one behind the rest of the Gypsies. The
travellers outnumbered the MPs, but sometimes those
shot for desertion in the trenches were executed in
groups. More than once, those we killed outnumbered
those of us who had been ordered to do the shooting. I
still see those things in waking nightmares. I had a feeling
so bad it was almost as if my bones were melting.
'Captain Mansard,' I said, 'I believe you are an
enemy of this country, and I also believe that you have
to be stopped.'
'And you're going to stop me, are you?'
'No,' I said truthfully. 'I don't have anything to stop
you with. But if you want to stop me telling people
about what you've been doing here in the forest with
these people you'd better kill me.'
'H!'
'I'm sorry, love,' I said to Hannah, 'but I can't just let
him execute these people.' I looked at Mansard.
'Because you will, won't you? I don't know why you
want Martin Stojka so much--'

'I told you!' I heard Stojka say. Then I watched, with
everyone else in that clearing, as he put his hand into
his jacket pocket and brought something very bright
out into the darkness.
I heard Mansard click off his safety catch.
'He wants this,' Stojka said, as he held what looked
like a dart of light up before him.
There was a gasp and then all of the Gypsies got
down on the ground and hid their faces in their hands.
The light from the thing, which was white and bright,
made their deep black hair seem to shine.
'The Fourth Nail,' I heard Mr Lee say. 'The Nail of
Christ!'
I don't believe in anything supernatural. I don't
think that such things are possible, but whatever Stojka
had in his hand lit the scene in front of my eyes so
brilliantly that I could now see the hard lines of hatred
on Captain Mansard's face. Addressing Martin Stojka,
he said, 'Give the Nail to me.'
I wanted to say something about his not believing in
this thing, but by that time I was speechless. As Stojka
held it out to Mansard I motioned for Hannah to get
out of it sharpish. But she was as fascinated by what
was going on as I was. Her eyes looked almost as if she
were seeing inside herself rather than staring at what
was happening outside. There was probably half a
second of the deepest silence this side of the grave. I
turned my attention from Hannah to Stojka. But now
the scene had changed. There was nothing bright and
ethereal in Stojka's hand any more and Captain
Mansard was screaming.
'Oh, Christ!' Mansard yelled. He was lying on the
forest floor, rocking, holding his face and shouting.
I'd seen nothing happen, yet Mansard was tearing at
one blood-filled eye. Martin Stojka, who had
embedded the nail in Mansard's face, watched
impassively. Even when Mansard's sergeant hefted his
rifle and shot Stojka, the Gentleman Gypsy did not
move. In fact, it wasn't for some moments that I
realised Stojka had been shot. Then, slowly, like a tree
that has been felled, he dropped forwards on to the
ground, the wound in his back pouring blood, his eyes
wide open and seemingly without life. The nail in
Mansard's face had ceased to glow and we were all
where we had been before Stojka had removed it from
his jacket, caught in the gloom of Mansard's boys'
torches.
'Help me!' Mansard shouted, as he clawed and
shredded his face.
'Fucking hell, Sarge,' one of the younger MPs said,
to the man with the stripes on his arm in front of him.
Rosie's Edward and her mother lifted their heads
from the ground, only to be shot by the other equally
terrified young MP behind the Gypsy group. He did it
as reflex, a deadly reaction to fear.
'Betty!' Mr Lee lunged across towards his wife's
twitching body.
'Stay where you are!' the sergeant MP warned him.
He took his eyes off Mr Lee and turned to Mansard.
'Captain?' he said.
But Mansard was speechless. Gasping for breath, his
fingers lost in a bloody hole inside his face, he rocked
on the ground in the grip of an agony I could only
imagine. I made to go over to him to see what I could
do. We're all human, aren't we, and he was a human in
great pain? But as soon as I moved I found myself
looking down a gun barrel.

'Kill 'em all, and then we'll think about what we're
going to say later,' the man with his gun in my face said
to his younger colleagues.
'There ain't half a lot of 'em,' the young lad who had
shot Edward and Betty replied, as he surveyed the
remaining wailing and bloodied Gypsies on the ground
before him. 'What about Captain Mansard?'
'I'll deal with him,' the sergeant replied. 'You do
what I tell you.'
'Sarge.' He swung his machine-gun down from his
shoulder again and clicked off the safety catch.
The man in front of me bent down towards Mansard
as Mr Lee tore himself away from his wife's body and
shouted, 'No!'
'Sarge' looked at his younger colleagues and said,
'Now!'
I saw one of the kids swallow hard before he fired,
but both he and his mate still did it. I could hear
Hannah screaming behind me and I feared she
might run forward in an attempt to save the Gypsies.
But she didn't move any more than I did. Whether
we were rooted to the spot with fear or whether
we didn't feel the Gypsies were worth our own lives,
I will never know. But the fear that it might have
been the latter haunts me. I felt pain when I saw little
Charlie Lee's life shot out of him, but that doesn't
do anything to lessen my guilt. In the end, if you're
there you do something, and in that moment I did
nothing.
Once the shooting had finished there was silence.
People imagine that after an execution like that some
of those only wounded will groan and cry out in their
agony. But it doesn't always happen, and it seemed at
the time that the young MPs had been thorough. All I
could hear was Hannah's weeping and the pounding of
my own blood inside my head.
'You,' Sarge said to me, as I stood trembling with
terror in front of him, 'get the nail out of Captain
Mansard's face. I think he's almost dead now.'
'No,' I whispered, my throat almost closed by terror.
His voice was so far from humanity it made me want to
be sick.
Sarge moved towards me. 'Now, you listen to me,
you dirty little wog,' he said. 'The Captain, Jonesy,
young Hanson over there and me, we've had 'ard time
getting hold of what these bleedin' Gyppos have.
We've lost the fuckin' war anyway, so why not give old
Adolf what he wants, eh? Captain would've done it for
love of the Fatherland, but I'm quite happy with the
ackers and the chance to carry on living meself.'
Mansard had now stopped clawing at his face and
was just twitching in a way that the dead Gypsies were
not doing. The nail, long, dark and thin, stuck way out
and up from inside his bloodied, smashed-up eye
socket.
'Don't do it, H!' I heard Hannah cry. 'We haven't lost
this war! We can't have lost this war!'
Sarge's face moved up into a sneer. 'What the fuck
do you know, love?'
I wasn't going to do a thing to help him.
'No,' I said, more strongly this time. 'You want it,
you get it.'
'I'll fucking shoot--'
'You're going to shoot us anyway!' I said. 'No, you do
it yourself.'
The youngster still standing behind the great heap
of dead Gypsies said, 'Sarge, it's getting light!'
I would have done what Sarge did, which was glance
up into the lightening sky, but my eyes were on
something that was moving at the edge of my view. It
was a man and, though bloodied, he did not appear to
be hurt.
'If you touch the Nail with bad intent it will do you
harm,' Mr Lee said, as he picked himself up from
among the bodies of his dead children.
'Jonesy!'
But the lad was frozen, his eyes riveted to the
gory, weeping figure that had emerged from the
massacre.
'The Gentleman, Mr Stojka, was keeper of the Nail.
It will let me, as one of his own, for a while, take it
now,' Mr Lee said.
Sarge moved his pistol away from me and pointed it
at the Gypsy. 'If you think I'm going to let you have
what we've taken months to find, then you've another
think coming! You ain't doing to me what that German
done to the captain!'
Mr Lee stood very still, then raised his arms slowly
into the air.
'Now, look here,' the MP said, 'unlike the captain, I
ain't no Nazi. Hitler must be a bloody madman to be
offering ackers for something like this. I just want the
money.'
'You've killed all these people for it!' I said. Until I
heard him talking so calmly about money the true
horror hadn't really hit me. A man, a woman and
children had been wiped out for something I would've
put in the same box with Lily's visions - something
from the mind. Relics were just bits of old wood, metal
and bone that people said were powerful because there
was a story attached to them. They weren't real. But all
of us, Sarge included, had seen that nail glow when
Stojka took it out of his pocket. And if Sarge was so
confident he didn't believe in its power, why had he
asked me to pull it out of Captain Mansard's face? Why
hadn't he done it himself?
'Yeah,' Sarge replied, 'and if you try to stop me and
Jonesy and Hanson, we'll kill you an' all.'
I glanced across at the other two and caught just the
briefest hint of doubt flash between them. They were
young and, as I knew from my own experiences, killing
doesn't always become a habit with blokes who take
oath for King and country. There were four of us Horatio,
Mr Lee, Hannah and myself - and only three
of them. They had less to lose than us, but they had the
weapons we lacked. Not that that superior situation
had saved Captain Mansard. Something else had
happened to him, something I still can't explain. It did make me think, though. 'Well, Sarge,' I said, as I fixed
Mr Lee with what I hoped was a meaningful stare, 'we
certainly don't want that, do we?'
'You don't.'
'No. So why don't you take the nail yourself and--'
'It's in the Captain's eye!' The watery early-morning
sun had risen considerably now and by its light I could
clearly see Sarge cringe. 'I ain't pulling that out!' He
pointed to Mr Lee. 'He can do it. Seems he wants to.'
'And then have you take it off him and kill us all
anyway? No, Mr Lee,' I said, 'don't do it. Don't--'
The muzzle of a pistol jammed against the side of
your head will generally shut you up and Sarge's
weapon had the appropriate effect on me.
'You ain't giving the orders here, Mr Hancock,' Sarge
said. 'That's for me to do.'
'Leave him alone!' I heard Hannah squeak.
But no one took any notice of her. 'Get the fuckin'
thing out of the captain's face, Gyppo!' Sarge said to Mr
Lee. 'Then lay it on the ground so I can pick it up
meself.'
'And if I won't?' Mr Lee was looking at me in a way
that told me he had understood what I'd wanted him to
do, which was to confound and confuse these already
edgy men by playing on their squeamishness, and their
distrust of him - another Gypsy with his hands on that
nail.
'Sarge, this is all going wrong!' the lad called Jonesy
said, panicking.
'Shut up, Private! Let me think,' Sarge said now,
visibly sweating with the strain.
'Jonesy's right,' Hanson chipped in, his voice
shaking with what sounded to me like terror. 'We can't
kill all these people and get away with it! Captain said
all we had to do was get that nail thing for him and he'd
give us money. No one said nothing about killing.'
'Oh, don't be such a bloody baby, Hanson! You knew
that the Captain killed the girl and you weren't too
upset about that. You even knew about Williams.'
'Ah, yes, Lily and Sergeant Williams,' I said. Sarge's
gun was still jammed against my temple but I felt I had
to carry on keeping him mentally off-balance. Also, I
was curious. Mansard had never explained why he'd
killed the Gypsy girl and his sergeant. 'Why did the
captain kill them?'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Why do you not want to tell me if you're going to
kill me anyway?'
Sarge wiped some sweat off his brow, then said, 'Fair
enough.' He cleared his throat. 'Williams found out the
girl knew about Stojka, heard her talking about him to
her brother-in-law. So, anyway, the girl, she fancied
Williams a bit, talked to him and that. He was a good
looking bloke, he got close. He convinced her he was
in love with her, playing her, like. You know how it is
with red-blooded geezers.'
'He was in love with her,' I heard Mr Lee say. 'He

'The girl liked him and told him Stojka was special,
but she wouldn't tell Williams where the German was.
He told the captain as much as he'd found out - he
trusted him then - and the captain told Williams to try
and find out more. But then Williams heard me and the
captain talking one day, about the nail and Hitler and
the money we was going to make. Couldn't hide how
cold he was towards us after that, so we followed him.
He went to see her first, Lily, to warn her. After that,
we heard him say, he was going to the coppers. Left us
with little choice. Captain killed the girl, I killed
Williams, and then the captain put his knife in
Williams's hand. It weren't difficult.' He took the gun
away from my head now and said to Private Jones, 'Get
that nail for us, will you?'
The boy didn't answer, just stood there with a dead
white face. A few birds were singing.
'Christ!' Sarge sighed, then reached into his
battledress pocket for a fag. 'Don't you blokes want to
make some ackers?'
Neither of the two privates, still with their guns
trained on us, answered.
'You'll have to come with me, whatever we do,' Sarge
said. 'So you might as well put your backs into it and
help me make some money. You've just killed some
people, for Christ's sake! Now, let's get this fucking
thing Hitler wants and get out of here!'
I sensed, rather than saw, the two privates make up
their minds to do as he asked, so I said, 'But how are
you going to get it to Hitler?'
'Oh, don't you worry about that,' Sarge said, and
gripped me hard around my throat. 'Captain had that
all arranged.' He let go of me and said to his men, 'All
right, Jonesy, you drag the captain's body into that
hearse and we'll deal with his eye later. Must be dead
by now, mustn't he.' He looked back at me. 'Handy
coffin in the back we can put him in, ain't there? You,'
he said to Horatio, 'help Jonesy.'
Private Jones and Horatio picked up Captain
Mansard's body and loaded it into the shell in the back
of my hearse. Sarge went on about how 'handy' it was
to have my motor at his disposal, while Hannah, Mr
Lee and I looked on with, in my case, mounting
anxiety. As soon as Sarge and his blokes had put the
captain away, the four of us would be of no use to him.
Not a ruthless man in the way I think Mansard had
been, but I recognised Sarge's type of pitiless greed.
He came, I imagined, from Canning Town or the Island
or some other place where kids walk about in Salvation
Army jumpers and the only uncle they know is the one
who lives in the shop with the three brass balls over the
door. Not that I think poverty can be an excuse for
killing, it can't, but it can and does explain some
people, like Sarge.
' Once Horatio was back with us again, we were all
made to go and stand by Mr Lee, whose dead wife,
children and son-in-law were on the ground behind his
back.
'Making a neat pile?' I asked Sarge, as he and his two
colleagues stood before us with their weapons at the
ready.
'It ain't personal,' he said, 'but if you live we might
not have time to get to the coast.'
I wanted to make some sharp comment about Sarge
meeting Hitler in Brighton for a walk around the
Pavilion and an ice-cream from the stop-me-and-buy
one man. But I knew that even if I did have to die, I
could try to save Hannah. Sarge and Jonesy took aim.
I put one hand out in front to try to stop them. 'Let
Hannah live!' I blurted. 'Take her with you!'
'H? No!'
'If you get into difficulty with the police you could
use her as a hostage,' I said. And then, laughing hysterically
at the madness of what for me was the last
clutched straw, I added, 'Take her with you. Use
her .. . She ... let her live . ..'
'No!' Hannah said. 'Go with them? I'd rather die!'
I began to weep. 'Hannah, this is nothing to do with
you. You must live . . .'
'I don't want to!' Her eyes were full of tears too,
smudging what little remained of her carefully put-on
funeral makeup. 'Not without you!'
I saw in her eyes what I had always known anyway,
but I wanted her to say it to me before one or both of
us died.
I put out my arms to her. 'Say it, Hannah, that you
love me.'
'I...' She moved into my grasp but was violently
jerked away from me. Private Hanson dragged her out
of the firing line by her neck and pushed her toward an
amazed Sarge. 'I--'
'Bloody hell, Hanson!'
'I can't kill a woman!' the private said. He was little
more than a boy, really. Then he just smiled weakly at
Hannah.
'You didn't have a problem with that Gypsy!' Sarge
snapped back, referring, I imagined, to Hanson's part
in the death of Lily Lee.
'No, I know, but... Well, that was a Gypsy and . . .
Sarge, maybe the undertaker fella's right about a
hostage ...'
As I've said before, Sarge wasn't exactly an evil man,
so I knew he didn't take pleasure in killing us. I saw
him think about what Hanson had said and then,
perhaps in spite of his better judgement, I saw him
shrug and say to Hanson, 'Well, put her in the hearse,
then. But if she gets lairy she's all yours.'
'You fucking--' Hannah spat and cursed as the
young boy dragged her towards the car. 'H! H!' I
turned my face away from her now and sighed with
something like contentment as I heard the two
remaining MPs take aim at us. I knew this routine of
old.
First Mr Lee dropped in an explosion of blood,
followed by Horatio, who died in the selfsame way. Not
a word or a look passed between any of us, not even an
expression of friendship, comfort or goodbye. We were
simply things to be slaughtered so others could get
money. It wasn't personal or cruel or even really that
frightening. My only regret, as everything went black
around me, was that I hadn't heard Hannah say she
loved me.
Chapter Fifteen

In all the time I'd spent in Flanders not once had
I ever been shot. I was gassed, twice, and
. wounded with a bayonet to the left-hand side
once, but until that moment in the middle of Epping
Forest I had never taken a bullet.
It hurt. Once I'd come round from what must have
been a faint, the pain smashed into me like a tank. I
couldn't scream, though. I couldn't make any sound
until the hearse had driven away, and for several endless
seconds Sarge and his boys hung around. Although
I thought of nothing at the time, I imagined later it was
because whoever was driving had had to work out how
to operate the Lancia before he took it on the road. But
eventually it went, and when I was sure I couldn't hear
it any longer I let out a long, low growl.
In a way I was angry with whoever had shot me for
not finishing me off. Surrounded only by the dead, I
looked at the place where the pain was coming from,
which was on my right-hand side, just under my ribs. It
would match up with my left side now, I thought
grimly, provided I survived, which didn't look possible.
I'd been shot in the stomach, the same as Horatio, who
was clearly dead, and unlike Mr Lee who had
obviously been shot in the head. Why the different
methods, I neither knew nor cared. I just felt the pain,
which had sent even all thought of Hannah from my
mind. There was blood everywhere. If I'd tried to
stand I would have slipped over in it. I remember that
I looked at the hand with which I'd attempted to cover
my own wound once and found that as soon as I took it
away I could hear my blood leaving my body in a
powerful stream. I felt dizzy and sick, and I knew, with
a certainty I'd never experienced in the Great War, that
I was going to die. There, on that leafy forest floor,
surrounded by dead Gypsies. I wondered, as the lights
went out in my head, what people would make of the scene and whether what had really happened there
would ever be discovered.
I went into that darkness in silence, but a voice
brought me - I have to say reluctantly - back into the
watery light of dawn.
'Oh, my, he ain't mullo--!'
It was a woman's voice and to me it was just
nonsense. Only when I could see again did I think I
knew what was going on.
'Lily.'
Lily Lee had come to greet me as I made my journey
into the land of the dead. It just went to show that
heaven was nonsense. I, an atheist, was there with Lily
Lee, a girl who had, to some, mocked God, Jesus and
the Holy Virgin.
'No, 'tain't Lily,' the very Lily-like girl said. 'I'm
Beauty.' And then she began to cry.
I thought how appropriate that word was for her
when I began to sink again. The last thing I heard was
a man's voice: 'We must get him to drabalo Mary. Ain't
no time for crying.'

As a rule I don't get drunk. There's quite enough going
on in my head without adding booze to the mixture.
But drunk was how I felt as I gazed up into the face of
someone so old and dry they could have been either
male or female. I even had the taste of booze on my
tongue: brandy.
The person said, 'It's going to hurt, gaujo. There's
nothing except the brandy that I can do about that.'
And then it was as if my right-hand side melted into
flames. In fact, there was a strong glow from firelight
dancing on the roof of the tent I had somehow come to
be in. And because this time I didn't seem capable of
passing out I soon saw other things in that dank little
space. As I said, there was a fire and a person I could
now see was a woman, but there was a man too, whom
I recognised from Mr Lee's fireside gatherings. I tried
to speak to him, to tell him it wasn't me who had killed
his friends and neighbours, but he said, 'You be quiet
now and without worry. We'm know what you done and
what you never.'
My eyes were fixed on two big buckets of steaming
hot water when the pain came again. I screamed.
'Here, bite on that,' the old woman said, as she
wedged a large clothes peg into my mouth. "Twon't
help with the pain but it'll give you summat to do.'
There wasn't always anaesthetic available in the first
lot. If supplies were low, our MOs would have to do
things in what they called 'the old-fashioned way'. If a
bloke came in with his leg shattered or if a chap had
taken a bullet, any surgery was done under booze if he
was lucky, and nothing if he wasn't. The woman the
Gypsies called drabalo 'doctor' Mary had been kind
enough to give me booze for which I will always be
grateful. But not at the time. As she hooked that bullet
out of me with what felt like red-hot tongs I called her
every name under the sun. To be fair, she swore back,
but it took her such a long time to free me from that
evil metal plug it's hardly surprising.
Although I was screaming silently into my peg for
most of the time, I was occasionally aware of other
things outside myself. I knew, for instance, that the
Lily-like girl called Beauty poked her head around the
tent flap from time to time.
'Yes, you look at the girl if it do make you feel
better, my rais,' Mary said, when she spied me staring
at Beauty. 'You look anywhere so long as it keep you
living.' And then she plunged something horrible
inside my body and this time I did pass out.
When I came to, I found myself looking up into
Beauty's, rather than Mary's, face.
'We have to get him to a gaujo doctor now,' I heard
Mary say, through her phlegm-heavy throat. 'He'm
need to have blood and gauje medicine.'
In spite of the pain, I felt light and slow.
Beauty smiled at me and I thought, I'm going to die. This lovely young girl is smiling at me with pity in her
eyes because I'm going to die. I opened my mouth to
speak, but found it impossible. But by that time
someone else, another man, was at Beauty's ear, and as
soon as he had finished speaking, she jumped up and
walked over to Mary.
'His car's been stopped,' she said, as she tipped her
head in my direction.
I thought, rather than said, Hannah.
'I'll have our Joe take him to the hospital,' I heard
Mary growl.
Beauty made as if to leave the tent, but Mary caught
her with one of her thin, leaf-dry hands and said, 'You
be careful, girl. Don't you go ...'
'I'll do what I have to,' the girl said, and left the tent
without another word.
Although light-headed, I knew that the blood I
could smell was probably my own. If I looked down I
could even see it - a great red blanket covering most of
my shirt, right down my trousers to my boots. These
days, I'm not as well off for suits as I used to be. Most
of those I haven't shrunk out of have been ripped by
flying glass or, in one case, nibbled by the rats that have
come out of the damaged sewers and into people's
houses. I began to ask Mary about the whereabouts of
my jacket but she shushed me and said, 'My boy Joe's
gonna take you down the hospital so you can get some
blood. I can't do no more for you now, my rats. Your
jacket will be fine wherever it might be now.'
And from then on it was as if a.light was switched on
and off by turns inside my head. My journey was
fractured because I was dying! It is in the nature of
what I do that I have some - second-hand admittedly experience
of what those around the dying have
observed. Putting aside the stories old ladies tell about
loved ones walking towards bright lights or Christ-like
figures opening their arms in greeting, those near to
death do seem to come into and go out of this world for
quite some time. Loved ones are recognised one minute
and forgotten the next, places, if my own experiences
are anything to go by, have no real meaning, so
how Joe, a young lad of no more than fourteen, took me
to Whipps Cross I still do not know. All I was certain of
at the time was that I was taken in a horse-cart in the
middle of what seemed a dreadful commotion of
people, horses and noise. That so many were destined
to be off somewhere quite different from Joe and
myself was only vaguely known to me then. Later I
would remember more. But at that moment... I am
told that by the time I reached the hospital I had
stopped breathing altogether.
Nobody woke me. Nobody pushed their face into mine
to rouse me from my sleep. Coming back to the land of
the living, in contrast to leaving it, was a gentle, slow
affair that occasionally allowed me a view of a woman
with very blonde hair. She sat in a chair beside my bed
smoking a cigarette, and although I couldn't make out
her face in all its detail, I knew she was connected to
me. There was that feeling you get when family and
loved ones are close at hand.
'Ag?' From my dry throat it sounded like the caw of
a crow.
My sister stood up, smoothed her skirt and then,
stroking my hair with one hand, leaned over to smile at
me. 'God help us, Frank,' she said. 'What have you
been doing?'
My throat was bad and I was far too tired to talk. I
was in a bright, empty room, whose walls were painted
green. The sheets I lay in were very, very white, and
there was a metallic tray with a syringe and a glass of
water on top of a cupboard beside the bed.
'You're in Whipps Cross hospital, Frank. They told
me a Gypsy boy brought you in,' Aggie said, and
added, with confidence, 'Charlie.'
Even if I'd had a voice I wouldn't have known where
to begin.
'It was Stella told us you'd took off with Charlie and
some other Gyppo and, er, Miss Hannah Jacobs,' Aggie
said, stammering a little over Hannah's name. Aggie
knows what Hannah is, and although she never says
anything, I know she doesn't find it easy to bear. The
mention of my girl's name made my heart jump.
Hannah. Last time I'd seen her she'd been pushed into
my hearse by that MP Private - Private ... I couldn't
remember his name! What had become of her?
'Hannah?' I croaked.
Aggie looked across to where I now saw a man
standing by a door. He was about forty and wore a long
dark raincoat and a trilby hat. Even in the state I was in
I could tell he was a copper. They have a way of
standing, with their hands behind their backs and their
feet turned out, that is unmistakable.
'Frank, the coppers need to talk to you,' Aggie said.
'About all this, what you've been through. This is
Inspector Richards from Scotland Yard. He don't want
to talk now, though, you're still sick and ... But in a bit,
you must...'
I ignored her. 'Hannah!' I said, and attempted to
push myself up in the bed, only to find that my whole
right side was on fire again. There was a sharp pain in
my right arm too. I slumped down again but as I did so
I signalled to Aggie that I'd like her to give me the
glass of water. Not that I could drink from it myself:
Aggie had to hold it for me. The copper by the door
watched with interest as I gazed at him over the rim.
He didn't look as if he was about to tell me anything
awful - but, then, who does, these days? There's only
so many times a person can look genuinely distressed,
and with people being blown to bits every day it
becomes too ordinary for real emotion. Even I, with my
mad brain, can't be upset or enraged all the time. No
one has the energy for that.
With my throat now lubricated I said to the copper,
'You want to talk to me?'
I saw Aggie glance at him with strain on her face.
'You've lost a lot of blood, Frank,' she said. 'Maybe talk
to Inspector Richards later, eh?'
It was obvious they were keeping something from
me so I asked him outright. 'Is Hannah Jacobs all
right?' I said. 'It's all I want to know.'
'Mr Hancock .. .'
'Frank, you have to hear the whole story or you
won't understand,' Aggie said. 'And you ain't really
able to do that yet, are you? You need to sleep.' She
stroked my head again, then said, 'Mum and Nan'll be
up later.'
I looked across at Inspector Richards with, I knew,
tears in my eyes. I was weak, I was tired, but I knew I
wouldn't sleep without knowing what had happened to
Hannah or passing on what I knew about Sarge, Jonesy
and ... and Hanson. Yes, that was the name of the other
private, the one who had taken Hannah away from me.
'I want to know now, Ag,' I said. 'I've things to say to
this copper.'
'Frank--'

'If your brother is happy to speak to me, Mrs Groves,
I'm very pleased to oblige,' Richards said. He spoke
stiffly but well, in that sort of accent some people who
have come from the East End and moved out a bit, into
Essex usually, tend to have. He also used my sister's
married name, which, for a moment, I didn't recognise.
In "general, these days, except for official purposes,
she's gone back to being Agnes Hancock.
Aggie went back to her chair. 'Well, Frank,' she said,
'if you must, I can't stop you but,' she looked at
Richards, 'you'll have to ask that matron before you
carry on. If she says my brother can't. . .'
'Mrs Groves, if you'd like to leave the room now,'
the copper said, with what even I could see was a
sudden, almost frightening coldness.
'Yes, but--'
'Mrs Groves!'
He opened the door, and outside I could see a
uniformed copper leaning against the corridor wall.
Aggie sat for a moment finishing her fag. Then she
stood up. 'Frank, if you get tired you must say so,' she
said.
I told her I would and then she made to leave. As she
drew level with Richards she said, 'You know, I will tell
Matron, and when I get home I'll tell Sergeant Hill up
at Plaistow about this an'all.'
Richards smiled. 'You can do that, Mrs Groves.'
'Yes, well, I will.'
'I'm sure my guv'nors at the Yard will be very
interested in what your Sergeant Hill might have to say
to them.'
'Yeah, well, they ought to be!' Aggie said, with a lot
of well-acted pride. 'Ain't right what you're doing!
Taking advantage of a sick man! He needs his rest, my
brother does, not endless questions!'
She marched out with her head held so high she was
almost looking over her shoulder. Beyond Sergeant
Hill, who is approachable for a policeman, Aggie has no
love for coppers - not because she's a bad girl, she just
doesn't like anyone in any sort of authority. In that
she's like most of our friends and neighbours in West
Ham.
Once Aggie had gone, Richards walked over and
took her seat. 'Okey-dokey, Mr Hancock,' he said.
'Let's find out what's been happening to you.'
Chapter Sixteen

Richards told me little, except that no one
answering the description of Hannah Jacobs
had been involved in any trouble - as far as he
knew. There had been, however, what he called an
'incident' involving my hearse.
'At just after seven o'clock this morning,' he said,
'officers in Leytonstone were called to a fracas on the
High Road. Your hearse was at the centre of it, Mr
Hancock, and a right strange sight it was too,' he said,
with a piercing stare. 'Four corpses was what greeted
those officers who looked inside, all Military
Policemen.'
'There was no woman with them?' I asked.
Richards shook his head. 'No. Just two young lads in
the back, one more at the wheel and the other in a
coffin. I can tell you, Mr Hancock, it was an eerie sight.
But, then, it was the end of what had been a most
funny morning.'
I imagined that the corpse at the wheel must have
been Sarge. I assumed he had driven off from the
forest in my vehicle. I couldn't think he'd've allowed
anyone else to do that for him. But how had he and the
others died? And then I remembered how Captain
Mansard had died and felt very cold.
'But then again I say that one of the corpses was at
the wheel when what I should say is what was left of
this poor character was at the wheel. He'd been torn to
pieces by something.'
I looked up into Richards's thin slightly grey face
and I heard him say, 'Do you know anything about this,
Mr Hancock?'
I told him everything, which he wrote down in his
notebook. It took a long time because I was exhausted.
Once a large woman in a matron's uniform came in and
asked nervously how I was. Whatever Aggie had said
hadn't worked. Matron had been told to keep away. I
wondered, even as I was telling Inspector Richards
about Mansard and his boys, how much the coppers
had known about the captain and his politics. Not that
he commented on any of what I said. He just kept
writing it all down grimly. Only when I came to talk
about the Nail did he look up.
'So you're saying,' he said, 'that the Gypsies were
hiding this Stojka fella to protect a nail s'posed to have
been used to crucify Jesus?'
That wasn't exactly how the Nail's history had been
told to me, but I said, 'Yes. Mansard wanted it to take
to Hitler. That was where Mansard's true sympathies
lay'
Inspector Richards, although I could hardly blame
him for it, was looking doubtful. 'In Germany?'
'Yes. He'd been a Blackshirt. My, er, Miss
Jacobs remembered him from back in the thirties,
with Mosley and his lads. She's a Jewish lady, Miss
Jacobs.'
'This is the lady we've not come across yet? The one
you say the MPs took?'
'Yes.'
'And where does Miss Jacobs live?'
I paused a little before I replied. For obvious reasons
Hannah doesn't like coppers knowing where she lives,
but if she was missing I didn't have any choice.
'Rathbone Street, Canning Town,' I said.
Inspector Richards wrote down this, to me, notorious
address without a flicker.
'I don't know where in the forest the Lees' boy
Charlie took us, so I can't tell you where to look for the
bodies of the Gypsies,' I said.
'We'll find them,' Richards said.
I could, of course, tell him when Mansard had died.
I also knew how many of the Lee family, Horatio and
Stojka had met their ends. But I couldn't explain how
Mansard had died - I still can't, if the truth be told.
Stojka must have attacked him in the half-second, or
whatever it was, when I looked away, but I can't always
convince myself that that is the case. Sometimes, even
now, I imagine the Nail floating off and attacking him
of its own accord. Clearly that's rubbish, but it still
crosses my mind. Richards, on the other hand, was
more certain.
'So this Gypsy Stojka attacked Mansard with the nail
and pushed it into his eye?'
. 'Yes ... Well, I think so.'
He nodded, paused briefly to light up a smoke, then
continued, 'So where did he, Stojka, go with this
amazing nail after he'd attacked Captain Mansard with
it?'
'He was shot by one of the captain's men,' I said.
'He didn't have time to get the Nail back.'
'So who took it out?' Richards asked.
'No one.'
'Not Sarge or,' he glanced at his notebook to remind
himself of the relevant names, 'or Privates Hanson or
Jones?'
'None of them would touch it,' I said. 'They were
squeamish about it, as I was. But they were afraid too.
Mr Lee, Lily Lee's father, warned them not to touch
it.'
'Mmm. Mumbo-jumbo.' Richards shook his head.
'We've had quite enough of all that round here from
those Gypsies, with their visions and virgins and God
knows what.'
I coughed. 'It isn't their fault that Hitler wants this
thing,' I said. 'They--'
'Well, anyway, there wasn't any nail in Mansard's
face when we found him,' Richards said, 'so someone
must have taken it. Maybe one of those barmy types
who attacked your vehicle.'
'What do you mean?' I said.
'We still don't know who stopped your car, not for
certain, but some people say it was a group of Gypsies.
This was up here on the Whipps Cross Road. What
happened we don't know. When we got the call about
your vehicle it was in Leytonstone High Road, up by
the Underground station, with four corpses inside. It
was surrounded by people who had recognised it as
yours and were looking for the body of Lily Lee.
Wanting to pay their respects, they said.' He smiled.
'Got a bit of a shock when they saw what was inside.
We've got all those we could lay our hands on down
the station. They all say the same thing. The hearse
was parked by the station and rumour went round
that the girl's funeral was happening today. Where
that rumour come from, especially at such an early
hour of the morning, I don't know and neither,
apparently, does any of those involved. The hearse
with your name on the side of it just appeared in the

I didn't remember any smog that morning but I'd
been rather far away and busy dying at the time.
Things came into my head now in what felt like a
jumble.
'The men who shot me, the MPs,' I said, 'they were
making for the coast.'
'And why were they doing that?' Richards asked.
'I don't know,' I said, 'but I think they were going to
carry on with whatever plan Mansard was following.
Maybe they were meeting other traitors ... Mansard
was going to take the Nail to Germany, which I
suppose would make sense of wanting to go to the

Richards nodded. 'You don't know where on the
coast, do you, Mr Hancock?'
I knew how important this question was so I racked
my brains to find an answer for him, but I couldn't.
We're told the coast, particularly here in the south, is
very well defended by a string of heavy gun
emplacements, pillboxes and anti-aircraft batteries.
If a boat or a plane had been coming from Germany
with the intention of picking Mansard up, its pilot
would have had to know what he was doing. Then
again, maybe Mansard had meant to deliver the Nail
to someone else, another Nazi, who perhaps lived
near the coast. I didn't know, and as time was going on
I was feeling more and more tired and in pain.
Richards, who had been, I think, largely oblivious to
anything outside his investigation now gave me a
strange look.
'I'll call the matron,' he said, got up quickly and
moved towards the door.
'What?' The room was spinning now in a queasy
fashion.
'Matron!' I heard him call down the corridor.
Then he rushed back to me and took one of my
hands in his. 'Mr Hancock?'
A thought occurred to me. 'You know,' I said, 'if
some Gypsies stopped my hearse in the first place,
they might know where Hannah is.' I felt very, very
sick and there was blood again, although I couldn't tell
whose it was.
'He's talking gibberish,' I heard Richards say to
someone. 'God, I hope I didn't put too much strain on
the poor chap!'
I couldn't make out the reply to this, except that the
voice was female, elderly and quite cross.
I went to sleep then and dreamt of the old crone drabalo Mary, and how, just after she'd taken the bullet
out of me, a great gang of Gypsies had gone off
somewhere.

For what I later discovered was almost another whole
day, the doctors at Whipps Cross tried to stop the
bleeding from my side but couldn't. As quickly as they
transfused blood into me - on one occasion from my
sister Aggie - it just poured out again. There was a raid
that night so I was moved with a glass bottle of blood
to the cellars. Not that I remember anything about that,
thank Christ. A nice young nurse told me about it later.
I don't even remember my dreams except that they
were not about Hannah, my family or anything of
importance in my life.
Everyone came to see me. My mother, my sisters,
Arthur and Walter, even poor Doris. Then they called
Father Burton. He was on his way to give me the Last
Rites when drabalo Mary's grandson Joe bade farewell
to Hannah at the front of the hospital and she asked
one of the nurses where I was. She was dirty and damp,
as if she'd been sleeping in the open, but the copper
still stationed outside my room let her come in to see
me. I remember her calling and crying, leaning on the
bed to shout into my face.
'H! H! For Gawd's sake, fight!'
I can only imagine how scandalised the Duchess and
Nan must have been by such behaviour. And even
though Hannah's reappearance marked a turning point
in my condition I didn't know about any of it until
some time later, when Father Burton had visited and
been sent on his way by a doctor who hoped he was
right that I seemed to be recovering. To me it was a
dream until early that evening when I opened my eyes
to see my family and Hannah ranged around my bed
with grey, concerned faces.
I would have liked to come to calmly, for their sakes
as much as my own, but I was rocketed back into my
life with a single thought. I gripped Hannah's arm and
said, 'The Gypsies! I've got to tell the coppers! The
Gypsies were going somewhere when drabalo Mary
took the bullet out of me!'
'Sssh!' Hannah smoothed her hand across my brow.
'Don't worry about that now, eh?'
'Yes, but--'
'H, don't go worrying about no Gypsies now. You just
get yourself well again.'
'Hannah,' I said, 'how did you get out of the car? My
car with the corpses and ...' I tried to pull myself up in
the bed but the pain in my side was still so great that I
slumped back on to my pillows.
'Francis,' I heard my mother say, 'Miss Jacobs is
right. You mustn't worry about anything now.'
I looked from Hannah to the Duchess and saw that
my mother was weeping. I tried and failed to reach out
to her.
'Oh, rest, will you, please, Francis? You nearly
died,' the Duchess said, in a voice so broken it was
painful to hear. 'I called Father Burton. Francis, I
nearly lost you!'
She got to her feet, came over and kissed every inch
of my face. I cried, I admit it. Then I realised something
I'd often thought about before: I owed it to them
to live. Sometimes I don't want to carry on. Even with
Hannah in my life, what I've done and what I've seen
outweigh everything. But that isn't the fault of my
mother or my sisters, and they should never have to
suffer because of me. So for the time being I didn't ask
any more questions, and didn't get any more answers,
until Hannah came to see me on her own the following
day. This time she was her usual smart-as-a-pin self,
complete with hair-do and perfume.
'Listen, H,' she said, as she sat down beside my bed
and lit me a Passing Cloud, 'you mustn't say nothing to
the coppers about the Gypsies.'
This seemed to be worrying her considerably. I took
the fag from her, drew in, then coughed, which made
my side hurt like hell. I hadn't smoked for a few days
so I had to push through the pain to get used to it again.
'But, Hannah,' I said, once I could speak properly, 'the
coppers think the Gypsies may have had something to
do with the death of Sarge and the others in the hearse.
I heard them, the Gypsies, all go off somewhere when
that girl took me back to the camp. It must've been
about the same time as--'
'Well, it can't have been,' Hannah said. 'I never saw
no Gypsies.'
'So how did you get out of the car?' I asked.
She shrugged. 'They pulled over. Near here, it was.
I opened the door and ran.'
'Didn't they run after you?'
'For a bit, yes,' she said.
'And they didn't catch you?'
I couldn't believe that three fit young MPs would
allow a middle-aged woman like Hannah to get away
from them. I could understand why, out of the forest,
they wouldn't want to shoot at her, but I was pretty
sure they'd have been able to catch her.
'No ...' Hannah turned away. My stomach churned
sickeningly.
'I know you're lying,' I said. She didn't contradict
me. 'If you'd really got away, you would've come
looking for me. But you didn't turn up anywhere until
yesterday. Why are you lying? We don't have any
secrets. What's going on, Hannah?'
'Nothing.' She glanced down at her hands. 'It's the
truth,' she said. 'I got away and I never come looking
for you. Sorry. I'm not as good a friend as you like to
believe sometimes.'
I still wasn't convinced and I told her so. The
previous day she had been desperate to see me,
worried sick. Now, suddenly, she wanted me to believe
she didn't care. I wondered, not for the first time,
whether she'd met someone else. But when or how she
could've done that, I couldn't imagine. It didn't make
any sense.
'The Gypsies saved you,' Hannah said, as she got up
to leave. 'Remember that.'
'How do you know the Gypsies saved me?' I asked.
'You and me, we haven't spoken about that.'
Hannah sighed. 'You talked about some Gypsy Mary
woman when you was in your fever. And, anyway, one
of the nurses told me,' she said, with more than a little
impatience in her voice. And what she said was quite
true: the nurses did know that the Gypsies had saved
me. 'Look, H, if you want to say you heard some
Gypsies going off somewhere when you was at their
camp, you can do that. That's up to you. But they never
come after your hearse. You ain't to say that they did,
because that ain't true. I don't know how them horrible
soldiers died, but it wasn't anything to do with no
Gypsies.'
'Have you been to see the coppers?' I asked. I knew
they had been keen for her to contact them.
'Well, of course I have!' she said, again tetchily.
'And you told them what you've told me about how
you got away from the car and--'
'Yes!'
'So did they ask you where you were between
escaping from the hearse and turning up here
yesterday?'
'Yes.' She was studying her hands again - so
different now from the scruffy vision I had seen the day
before. Unusually for Hannah, she had actually been
dirty.
'And what did you say?'
She looked me hard in the eyes before she
replied. 'I told them I was working,' she said, 'which I
was.'
'But you didn't go home. They would have found
you there if you had because I told them where you
live,' I said. 'I was worried!'
'Well, I was making meself a few bob up in the
forest,' Hannah said. 'You were dead, as far as I knew,
and I didn't have a farthing on me to get home. Now
that a lot of those religious people have gone there are
plenty of sorts going about all types of business up
there needing a little company among the trees.'
I stubbed out my fag in the ashtray beside my bed. I
was trembling with anger now. 'I don't believe you,' I
said. 'Going with gangsters up against trees? With me
not even cold, as far as you knew? You couldn't be so
heartless. Did you tell the coppers about Mr Lee and
Horatio and me getting shot?'
"I was scared,' Hannah said. 'I went off and did what
I do and hoped it might all go away!' Her eyes filled
with tears. 'That's how it was, and if you don't believe
me, well - well, stuff you, Francis Hancock!'
And with that she left. In tears and with a face as red
as a tomato and me not knowing whether to feel hurt,
confused or just plain angry. She had, after all, provided
I did as she said, put me in a difficult position with the
police. What she wanted me to do, while not actually
lying, was leave out a detail they might find useful.
The Gypsies had left to go somewhere in a hurry at just
about the time that the hearse stopped on the first
occasion. Someone on Whipps Cross Road had even
seen some Gypsies around the car at the time. YetHannah wanted me to say I had no knowledge of this. Well, I did and so did she. I thought about these things a lot in the hours that followed, and it wasn't comfortable. Being hurt in your mind or your heart is far more painful than being hurt in your body. This time was really the darkest period of the whole affair for me.
266 Chapter Seventeen

I was sent home from Whipps Cross the following
day. I could hardly walk, so they laid on an
ambulance to take me back to the shop. Like
most people, these days, I wasn't strong enough to
leave hospital, but the nurses and doctors can't cope
with any more than the most serious cases. Every night
brings new casualties so once you're reasonably well
they let you go. But, then, our family is lucky in that we
have a doctor and the wherewithal to pay him. I'd only
been home for half an hour at most before Dr O'Grady
came to inspect my wound and talk to me about how it
was to be cared for.
'You will need to rest, Frank,' he said, 'and you will
have to go down to your shelter.'
'No,' I said firmly, smiling as I did so because
Dr O'Grady is a good man and always means
well.
'I'm going to tell Arthur to help you get down to the
shelter before he leaves for the night,' the doctor
continued, ignoring me.
'Doctor--'
'Frank, for the love of God, will you think of your
mother and sisters for once?' the doctor roared. 'Go
down to the shelter for their sake!'
I knew that he was aware of why I didn't like going
down the Anderson and that he had some sympathy
with me. But Dr O'Grady, like everyone else, was tired.
He left without another word while I tried not to think
about going down the shelter, even though his words
had convinced me that I had to try to do so.
Against my instructions Doris had been allowed to
come back to work and, a little after the doctor had left,
she knocked on my bedroom door and brought in my
appointments diary. Her face, though made up as it
usually is, was as dry and white as a clean sheet of
paper.
'Mr Cox has been covering your bookings since
you've been ill,' she said. Albert Cox has an undertaking
business down in Canning Town and, although
he was getting paid what should have been my money
for taking over, he was doing me a real favour.
'Yes, he's a good mate,' I said. I noticed that Doris
had lost still more weight. Poor sad girl, it didn't do her
any favours. 'Doris ...'
'Mr H, if this firm don't do no work, you and your
family are going to go hungry.' Her eyes filled withtears, as much, I felt, for her poor dead husband as for
me and my family. 'I can't bear to think of Mrs H
suffering.' She wiped a hand across her eyes. 'So I've
been thinking and it seems to me that the best thing
you can do is give Arthur the chance to do your job.'
Arthur is sixteen years old, thin as a rail and full of
spots, poor lad. I must have looked thunderstruck to
say the least, but then Doris held up her hand to me.
'Hear me out, Mr H,' she said. 'I know he looks like a
plum duff and he ain't always the brightest lad in the
world, but he would like the chance. He's seen you
conduct a hundred times and he knows what to do.'
He probably did. Whether he'd have the necessary
gravity was another matter. I didn't even have my wand
to pass on to him! Without it, I felt sometimes that /
lacked gravity. I was honest with Doris and told her my
feelings.
She said, 'Look, Mr H, nothing's right at the
moment. You're up here, and we're ... well, we're
several bearers down.' She averted her eyes for a
second, remembering, I had no doubt, the times when
Alfie had occasionally done that job for me. 'But I've
spoke to my uncle Wolfie, who's said he'll come and do
a turn bearing for you. We've only got the one hearse.'
'What?'
'The coppers have still got the motor car,' Doris said.
'They still don't know who killed them boys.'
'No?' I hadn't said anything to her about what hadhappened to me, but I imagined that the Duchess and
the girls would have told her what they knew.
'No.' But she had no more need to discuss what had
happened up in the forest than I did. 'So that just
leaves us with the horse-drawn,' Doris continued. 'But
we managed with the horses until very recently, didn't
we?'
'Yes.' Except that until September 1940 death
wasn't as popular as it was by November, not even in
this poor manor.
'We'll be all right,' Doris said. 'I'll go and speak to
Uncle Wolfie tonight, and if you have a word with Arthur
we can do the funeral that's down for eleven o'clock
tomorrow morning. Look.'
She showed me the booking in her neat hand. It
said, 'Queenie Ramm, 11 a.m., Haig Road to East
London C'try'. It didn't look like a difficult job - I
knew it wouldn't be a big do. Queenie had died the
previous week after a long struggle against TB. She'd
been in her eighties and left only a widowed daughter,
who was childless.
'Well, all right, then,' I said, after a bit. 'Send Arthur
up, and if you can speak to your uncle Wolfie ...'
'Smashing!' She actually smiled. If nothing else
came of this plan, it was all right by me if it made Doris
smile. 'I'll go and tell him right now.'
She went to take off downstairs like a rocket but I
managed to stop her. 'Doris!'She turned back, her face tense and grey again.
'Nothing,' I said, with a smile. 'Thanks, Doris.'
'Thank you, Mr H.' And then she was gone. People
react to tragedy in so many different ways it's
impossible to say what they will or will not do. Doris
was dealing with her loss by throwing herself into her
job. She didn't want to be at home and she didn't want
to talk about Alfie. That I had wanted to speak to her
about him was more to do with me than her, and I was
glad now that I hadn't.
I waited for Arthur to appear, all six foot odd of him,
and lit up a Woodbine to pass the time. I still
wondered about him. I looked into the little fire Nan
had lit for me in my fireplace and found myself
worrying again that I had no wand to give the boy. And
this time it wasn't a niggle as it had been before: it was
a deep, superstitious worry that lack of the wand could
only spell disaster for Hancocks. After all, ever since
my grandfather, Francis, had started the business back
in 1885, the wand had been with whoever had
conducted. Just knowing it was no longer around made
me feel naked. It was then that I began to think about
the Nail the Gypsies prized and where it might have
ended up. In a way the Nail and the wand were the
same: relics with meaning and therefore power over
those who believe in them. That the Nail had no
significance for me didn't mean I couldn't feel
something of it. I'd felt something when Lily had hadher first vision; I'd felt terrible superstitious fear when
Stojka had used his relic to murder Mansard. I just
couldn't connect any of that to God. Like my wand,
such things should be free of any explanation or
reason. That they just are is a mystery, and maybe
that's the whole point.
But I was far from at peace with what had happened
to me, and the whole affair was not to be put
completely to rest just yet. Even with a war on, our
police still have a duty to solve murders, and the
Epping Forest Business, as I believe the thing is called
these days in copper circles, had brought them a lot of
dead bodies, eleven in total, that had not been killed
by bombs. They took it very seriously indeed and, as I
was soon to see for myself, just because I'd been shot
it didn't mean they wouldn't come back to me for
further explanation.
It wasn't Arthur who walked up our stairs after Doris
had gone but Inspector Richards.
'Well, Mr Hancock,' Inspector Richards put his trilby
hat on his lap as he sat down in the chair at the side of
my bed, 'what can I say?'
There was an edge to his manner that I didn't
remember him having when he'd seen me up at
Whipps Cross. Maybe I was only noticing it now that I
was so much better. Or maybe it was new, and if it was,
what lay behind it?'Mr Richards?'
'I have succeeded in discovering the bodies of the
Gypsy Lee family, Horatio Smith and some other
character no one seems to want to talk about,' Richards
said. 'They were in an area of the forest known as
Woodford Wells. Apparently, the Gypsies had already
found them.'
'Yes,' I said. 'The Gypsies found me there. That's
why I'm alive.'
'Yes, I know,' he replied. 'Some Gypsy kid brought
you in to Whipps Cross. The Gypsies didn't try to hide
the site from us. Didn't exactly tell us about it either,
though.'
'I'm sorry I wasn't able to tell you in the hospital,' I
said. 'I couldn't think straight then and, anyway, I had
no real idea about where I was at the time. Woodford
Wells is news to me. But the Gypsies didn't tell you?'
'No, the poor bloody coppers had to work it out for
theirselves yet again.' He shook his head. 'Gyppos I'd
already asked them to tell us what they knew and
they'd shook their heads like they was all Mutt and
Jeff. Then when the bodies were found, there are the
selfsame Gyppos sitting around looking at them!' His
speech was much more London than it had been
before. 'Would you credit it?'
I explained, as far as I could, the Gypsies' views
about dead bodies and how greatly they feared them.
When I'd finished Richards said, 'The Gyppos, theysay, know nothing about what happened to the Lees
and the others. I asked them about this Stojka fella you
told me about and they all said they didn't know what
I was talking about.'
'The unknown body is Stojka,' I said. 'The MPs
were looking for him in the forest. Ask what's left of
Mansard's group.'
'Oh, I've already done that so I'm in no doubt that
the body is Stojka's. It was obvious the Gyppos were
lying. But there are some other problems, Mr Hancock.
I'd be telling an untruth to you if I said that there
weren't.'
He offered me a fag from his packet of Players
Weights, which I took.
'You see, you are the only person who's said anything
to us about this mysterious Nail of Christ article. You're
also one of only two people who survived whatever
happened up there in the forest.'
'Yes, Han-- Miss Jacobs survived,' I said.
'Yes, and Miss Jacobs has told us how brave you
were, Mr Hancock, in trying to stop Mansard and his
men arresting Stojka. How you prevented the MPs
keeping the Gypsies, who were hiding him, at bay. She
didn't put it like that, of course.' He leaned towards me
and said something that came as a shock to me,
'Mansard was doing his duty. Stojka was a Nazi.'
'No! No, he can't have been! That's not right.'
'Sergeant Williams came and told you about MartinStojka and why he was wanted by the authorities.'
'Sergeant Williams was killed by Captain Mansard.
That other sergeant of Mansard's told me. Williams
found out that Mansard and his sergeant were Nazi
sympathisers and went to see Lily Lee to tell her to be
on her guard and not let on about Stojka's whereabouts
to Mansard. Williams was going to come to you, the
police, but before he could do that Mansard and his
men killed Williams and Lily to silence them. Mansard
put the knife into Williams's dead hand to make it look
as if he had killed Lily Lee.'
'Did he? Dr Craig - I believe you've met him - has
given his opinion that the killer of Lily Lee had to be
Williams. He wanted relations with the girl, she
wouldn't have it, so he killed her. Then he killed
himself
'No .. . No. Dr Craig needs to look at his evidence
again and in the light of what that sergeant told me.'
Richards shrugged. 'Maybe he does, although the
doctor is certain Williams killed the girl, Mr Hancock.
That's what's written down in black and white for all to
see. Dr Craig even thinks that Captain Mansard was
trying to protect Sergeant Williams - or, rather, his
memory. The captain himself seemed to think, or
wanted to think, that one of the Gypsies had killed the

I was feeling shaky now, so as soon as I'd put out the
fag he had given me, I immediately took one of my
own. The story of what had happened in the forest,
what had been said and believed, was changing in front
of my eyes. It made me wonder whether I had got all
my facts right, whether I had had any handle on what
had been real and what hadn't.
'Mr Hancock, I think you've been taken in by these
Gyppos,' Richards said. 'Miss Jacobs has told us there
was a lot of talk about some superstitious rubbish
between you and the Gypsies. She says you weren't
completely took in, in her opinion, and to your credit.
She saw Stojka attack Mansard and one of his boys
shoot the Gypsy in his defence.'
'Mansard's boys shot the Lees,' I said. That
absolutely was and had to be true. 'They executed
those people!'
Richards was beginning to give me the kind of look
people gave our Stella just after her house was bombed
out. 'No, no, Mr Hancock,' he said. 'The Gypsies were
threatening the Military Police. There was no
execution. Dr Craig has inspected the site and the
bodies, and he is convinced that the Gypsies were
killed with just cause. The MPs had no choice.'
My heart was pounding. 'It wasn't like that,' I said.
'The Gypsies were unarmed! How could they have
hurt anyone? I was there! Is Dr Craig mad or--'
'Mr Hancock, Military Policemen have been
murdered!'
'Gypsies have been murdered!'
'How many more times?' he shouted. 'The Gypsies
were hiding a Nazi! These people killed our boys some
of them in your car!'
'Does Miss Jacobs, who was in the car, after all, say
that the Gypsies killed the MPs?' I asked. Hannah had
asked me not to talk about any Gypsies going out to
pursue or intercept my car when I was back in the
hospital. I wondered, with good reason, what she was
saying about it now.
Richards was brought up short by this, or so it
seemed. He paused for a moment, taking a deep
breath. Then he said, 'Well, no, no, she didn't say
anything about Gypsies. She ran away before anything
happened. I think she knows it was wrong now.'
'Why?'
'The MPs were only trying to help her.'
'No, they weren't,' I said. 'I told you, they took her
captive!'
'We believe they took your car to go and get help for

'They tried to kill me. Miss Jacobs knows. Ask her!'
He didn't answer. Whatever Hannah may or may not
have said, I knew she had to have told the coppers
she'd been taken against her will by the MPs.
'They shot me, those "boys",' I said. 'And that is
something that can't be argued with.'
'Can't it?'
I stopped breathing temporarily. Now I wasfrightened. I knew what he was going to say next and
it terrified me.
'You aren't always aware of what's going on, Mr
Hancock,' Inspector Richards said. 'Not that I'm
criticising. I was in the Great War myself and I saw a lot
of men go through ... what you go through. It's ...'
'I'm not mad, Inspector Richards,' I said, as calmly
as I could. I was gazing at the statues of the saints on
top of the tallboy in the corner of the room now to
distract myself from the copper.
'No one is saying you are, Mr Hancock,' he replied.
'But you know that accusing our boys of anything
treasonable is a serious business. We have to be very
sure.'
'And you're not sure, are you?'
I heard him sigh. 'Mr Hancock, I am only
anticipating what others will say. Your story, you have to
admit, is fantastic, and that you and Miss Jacobs are
telling it, well.. .'
A madman and a whore. No it didn't look promising,
and in our new world of censorship in the name of
morale, I could see his point. After all, how reporters on
the Daily Sketch would tell the country about Nazis in
the King's armed forces I didn't know. But the point, of
course, was that they wouldn't, because they, like the
rest of the country, would never know.
'Don't you want to find out who killed the four
MPs?' I asked.'Well, of course I do,' Richards said. 'I'm not giving
up on those Gypsies, you know.'
'But why would they kill the MPs, eh?'
'Because, like it or not, we have to accept that one of
the MPs, Williams, killed the Lee family's daughter.
And, anyway, we've witnesses saw some Gypsies in
Whipps Cross Road.'
'Yes, but Hannah said she didn't see any Gypsies on
Whipps Cross Road, didn't she? And she was in my
hearse.'
'Well, either she's lying or the Gypsies came along
after she had gone. I'd ask her again if I knew where
she was.'
Now I looked at him.
'' 'Miss Jacobs left her digs in Mrs Harris's house in
Canning Town yesterday afternoon,' Richards said.
'According to Mrs Harris, she left no forwarding
address. We're searching for her now.'
I felt as if I'd been kicked in the chest. 'Are you

'Why would I lie?' he replied. 'She paid all her rent
up to yesterday, then left. She took a suitcase with her.
She didn't tell Mrs Harris where she was going, except
that she was staying outside London.'
'No.' I shook my head. 'No, that's impossible.'
Hannah didn't know anyone outside London. Beyond
Dot Harris and the other 'old girls', as she calls them,
in the house in Rathbone Street there was only myselfand her family. But she didn't get on with her parents
so she couldn't be with them. I was panicking now and
couldn't think straight to imagine where she might be.
'You'll have to give us a proper statement soon, you
know, Mr Hancock, especially if Miss Jacobs doesn't
reappear, so I'd think carefully about what really
happened that night,' Richards said, as he rose to leave.
'We all need to pull together for the good of the war
effort, don't we? Can't have no frightening stories might
make people nervy. Anyway, I'd best let you rest
now.'
He left, and I stared into the fire once again. I
suppose I was looking for comfort. But I didn't find
any. Hannah had gone and I didn't know why, not for
certain. Gypsies had to be involved somewhere
because she'd been so insistent that I fail to mention
them to the coppers. They'd had a hand in the deaths
of Sarge and the others, but not for the reason that
Richards thought. The Gypsies were not Nazi
sympathisers - that was ridiculous. Unless I was wrong.
I did, I admit, begin to wonder about what I had seen
and done in the forest. I know I don't always see and
hear what others do, yet the fact remained that Sarge
and the others had talked about that Nail, they had
shot me and taken my motor car. However much
Richards wanted the 'boys' to be innocent, they
weren't. And as for making people 'nervy', surely if
Nazis were active either in London or on the coastpeople needed to know. Well, I thought so anyway,
even though I knew that the government view was
probably quite different. What people know, even now,
is laughable. It's just like the first lot in that respect.
'Careless talk costs lives' but so does no talk at all. Not
talking means not knowing and that can be very
dangerous.
For a while I racked my brains for any friends
Hannah might have that I knew little about. But there
was only the magician, David Green, and I was pretty
sure she wouldn't be with him. But, then, even if I had
known where she was I couldn't have gone after her in
my condition. Every movement still gave me pain and
I was very weak.
There was a knock then, and Arthur popped his
smiling head around my door.
Chapter Eighteen

Inspector Richards didn't hang about. The following
morning he was back on my doorstep, demanding
that statement of his. He wasn't unpleasant
about it but Doris, who'd told me how impatient he'd
been to see me on the previous day, wasn't inclined to
hurry him into the parlour, which was where I'd chosen
to be that morning. With Nan and Walter's help I'd got
out of bed and was now talking to Arthur about his new
temporary job as a fully fledged undertaker.
'The important thing,' I said to him, 'is to maintain
the dignity of the occasion. If you slip over or fall into
a hole left by an incendiary, then that doesn't matter
and you just carry on as if nothing has happened.
Letting go of the coffin, however, war or no war, is very
bad. The deceased and his or her family don't deserve
that, so you watch what the bearers are doing and if
they look as though they might be in trouble, you go
and help them yourself.''Yes, Mr H.' Arthur has always looked like a stick of liquorice in his mourning suit and topper. But in the
past, of course, he's always been at the back of the
cortege. Now he was about to be right at the front, all
six foot God knows what of him, looking like an
overgrown, badly dressed infant. Spots and boils are
not what you usually associate with a funeral director
but that was what the funeral of Queenie Ramm was
going to be treated to and that was that. Or so I
thought.
Aggie had slipped into the parlour without my
noticing her. When I did, though, unusually, she was
smiling. She also seemed to have something hidden
behind her back.
'Well, Arthur,' she said, 'what a day, eh? Conducting
a funeral and you not even twenty-one.'
I saw the boy's face whiten.
'Younger than you were, Frank,' she said to me, and
she was right. I hadn't conducted a funeral until I was
into my thirties, when Dad's malaria got too bad for
him to carry on. 'And so,' Aggie continued, 'because we
love you and because my brother is a very superstitious
man, I've come to give you this.'
She whipped one of her hands around and held
up a long cane, topped with an ornate, familiar silver
handle.
'It's your wand,' she said, as she pressed it into my
hands. 'Well, it's the top of it. Nan gave it to me. Shesaid you was so upset and wondered if I knew anyone
as could help. There's this bloke down the Abbey
Arms, owes me a favour ...'
I grinned.
'So give it over to Arthur, then,' Aggie said, in the
sharp way she's always had with her. And then, smiling
at the boy, she said, 'You'll be all right, Arthur, now
you've got the wand.'
'I know,' he said, and in spite of his lack of belief in
superstition I felt he meant it. Some things, whether
you believe in their 'power' or not, are just important.
I gave Arthur my wand, then waved him off to his
first shot at the 'top job'. 'I won't let you down, Mr H,'
he said, as he left.
Once I was alone with my sister, I gave her a
cuddle. 'So, who's this fella down the pub owes you
a favour, then, Ag?' I asked. I was curious to know
who had fitted the handle of the old wand, which itself
had been damaged in the blast, so well on to the new
cane.
'Someone with a girlfriend who has a sweet tooth,'
Aggie replied, with a wink. Working as she does at Tate
& Lyle's sugar factory, I knew not to ask any more. All
sorts of deals are done in pubs, always have been, and
our local is one of the only places Aggie can get any sort
of relief from her long shifts at Tate's and her not-always-happy
time at home with the rest of us. She's
still quite young and pretty, in spite of the shortages wehave to put up with - as well as the hard conditions
down at Tate's - and I've lived in hope for some time
that she might meet a nice bloke who'd really look
after her. But there's been no luck on that score so far.
'Frank.' She came and sat down beside me, looking

'Look, I know you're still not well enough to do
much but... there's a horrible smell out the back, in
the room where ... Frank, Lily Lee's still down there
and I don't know what to do with her.'
My jaw dropped. I'd forgotten all about her. There
had been so much death and I'd been so ill that she had
entirely slipped my mind.
* 'Oh, Christ, she needs burying,' I said. 'But her
family. ..'
'Well, that's what I thought,' Aggie said. 'From what
you've told us they're dead, aren't they?'
They were mostly, although I knew that when the
parents had disappeared into the forest to escape from
the MPs and aid Martin Stojka they had left their
young daughters at the Eagle Pond camp. Lily still had
family of sorts, and there was her sister Rosie's grave,
which could be reopened to take her.
'Ag, are you doing anything?' I asked. 'Because if
you're not could you go and see Ernie Sutton and tell
him I need to talk to him? I'd do it myself but. ..'
'Oh, don't be daft, the telephones are down. Ofcourse I'll do it,' Aggie said. 'Can't have that stink,
Frank, not for much longer.'
She stood as if to go. 'There's that copper of yours
downstairs with Doris, the one who says he's from
Scotland Yard,' she said. 'Doris has kept him out so you
could speak to Arthur, but I suppose you'd better talk
to him now. He's been downstairs so long he's even
started chatting to Stella.'
'Yes . . .' She'd talked of Richards oddly, I thought.
'What do you mean he "says he's from Scotland Yard",
Ag? He is from Scotland Yard.'
'Yeah, I know, but he gives me the heebie-jeebies. I
complained to Sergeant Hill at our station about him
when you was in hospital. I was afraid all his
questions'd make you ill, and they did. Anyway, I just
don't like him.'
'What? Because he's a proper copper? Not a sort of a
mate like Sergeant Hill?'
'Some mate!' She laughed. Aggie has more than a
few friends who buy and sell things they shouldn't.
'But you're right-1 probably don't like Richards 'cause
he's "proper".'
But she still seemed puzzled. I thought at the time
that maybe she was angry with Richards - perhaps
because he'd made a pass at her. A lot of blokes do and
she's rarely flattered by it. But when she showed him
up, there didn't seem to be any atmosphere between
them so I just got on and gave him my account of whathad happened in the forest again, this time in a formal
statement. He told me that I could have the Lancia
back the next day. I was pleased, but I'd already
decided that, car or no car, I was going to get out of the
shop sooner than that. I couldn't take another night in
that Anderson - it was a flipping leaky box just waiting
to become my coffin. I hoped that Ernie Sutton would
do as I was going to ask him.
Just before he left, Richards said, 'Oh, we've taken a
couple of male Gypsies in for questioning about the
deaths of Mansard and the others. I'd like to find the
Lees' daughters but they've disappeared.'
'Have they?'
'Yes. If you hear anything you'll let me know, won't

'It's not likely, with me stuck here, is it, Inspector?'
'I don't know, Mr Hancock,' he said. 'Maybe the
Gypsies will come to you. It wouldn't be the first time
and, I believe, you still have the body of the girl Lily
on your premises.'
. 'Yes.'
'Well, keep me informed, won't you? As yet, it's still
only you and Miss Jacobs who claim to have seen the
miraculous nail. The Gypsies and the remaining MPs
in Mansard's company know nothing about it.' He
looked me straight in the eye but without even a hint
of a smile. 'In view of Miss Jacobs's disappearance it
would be better for you, Mr Hancock, if someone elsecould confirm your story about that night. The Lee
girls, having lost their parents and brothers, have no
need to conceal the truth, whatever it may be. We do
need to find them.'
I returned his very straight gaze with one of my own
and said, 'Yes.'
'Apart from anything else, I assume those girls will
want some involvement in a funeral for their relatives,'
he continued. 'If not, it'll be parish dos, won't it?
Seems a shame to me that they could end up in
paupers' graves when the girls could have them buried
decently.'
I didn't answer him. He had an entirely different
view of what had happened to me from the version I
believed. I resented having to prove myself, and what
I'd been through, to him.
Richards stood up, smiled, then almost immediately
frowned. 'By the way, Mr Hancock,' he said, 'you've a
bad smell downstairs. Your drains damaged, are they?'
Stella let him out, babbling on about how Horatio
Smith 'would've killed our Frank stone dead if it
hadn't been for me', as she led him down the stairs and
out into the yard. Later on, when she thought I was
asleep, Stella came into the parlour and stared slack
jawed into my face. I didn't know what she wanted and she didn't utter a word. It was an unnerving, almost
frightening experience.'Ernie,' I said, as soon as he came into the parlour and
settled himself beside me, 'can I borrow your motor

Of course, I couldn't drive myself-1 still didn't have
my own car - so Ernie had to do that for me. I couldn't
after all, ask the police. After Richards' visit I had some
important reasons for wanting to speak to the Gypsies
- if I could find them - without any help from any
coppers. Ernie, too, had an interest in trying to find
what remained of the Lee family.
'If I've no information to the contrary, I'll have to
copy what I did for Rosie's funeral. I won't perform a
pauper's do - I'd rather pay for it all myself than that,'
he said, as he brought his car to a halt in front of Eagle
Pond. 'But I'd like to make it more personal if I can,
with chosen hymns and whatever, and it would be so
much better if Lily's family could be there.'
The sun was setting and a thick, almost smoggy mist
had fallen across the trees. Nothing, as far as I could
see, was moving in the thick undergrowth or around
the pond. It was silent too, which is not something
easily associated with groups of people. But as Ernie
pulled me, in some pain, out of his car, I was not
downhearted. I knew how easily the Gypsies could
hide themselves in the forest. I also knew that once
they'd spotted me they would want to talk to me too,
in all probability, if only to ask me what I'd said about
their fellows in police custody. And from my point ofview there was another reason. The Gypsies, I hoped,
might be able to tell me what Hannah had done after
she'd escaped from the MPs' car. By her own admission
she'd gone back into the forest where they, or some of
them, had been at the time.
As Ernie and I inched forwards into the undergrowth
around the pond, I told him that Hannah had
disappeared.
'Well, you know, Frank, that may not be such a bad
thing,' he said, as he slid an arm under my shoulder and
helped me to step over a fallen log. 'She's a very nice
woman, Miss Jacobs, but she is, well... I don't have to
tell you what she is, do I?'
'What do you mean?'
He had to know that Hannah was a Jew, but I'd
thought he was ignorant of the other details of her life.
'Well, what she does, her ...'
His words made me frown. I'd never looked on
Ernie Sutton as a man to judge others. 'Do you mean
because she's a Jew or because she's a torn?' I asked
him, I admit harshly.
'Frank,' he said, 'I'm a vicar. I have to say these
things. Where would we be if we all married outside our
own religion, eh?'
'You forget, Ernie,' I gasped, as the pain bit into my
side, 'I don't have a religion.'
He didn't answer but made me sit on a tree
stump. Apparently even the small amount of lightcoming from the evening sky showed that my face was

'Your Aggie was right,' Ernie said, as he looked at me
hard. 'You shouldn't be out. Your mum'll have my guts
for garters when she finds out I've taken you off into the
wild blue yonder.'
Aggie alone, as far as I was aware, had known I was
going out and she hadn't been happy about it. I told her
I had to in order to sort out Lily Lee's funeral with her
family. She had replied that, given a choice between
my health and Lily Lee's funeral, she'd rather the poor
girl stink the shop to the ground rather than me have
one more second's worth of pain. She hadn't got her
way and soon it would be dark. Being among the trees
again brought back the feelings and fears I'd had when
I'd last been in the forest - with Mansard and his men,
the Lees and my Hannah. I felt my breathing go and
not, for once, because a raid had begun. That particular
horror was not uppermost in my mind. It would come
much later.
Standing over me, Ernie shook his head and was
about to say something when a voice called from
somewhere to me: 'Mr Undertaker.'
I cocked my head to one side, thinking that perhaps
I hadn't heard right. 'What?'
Ernie, too, was frowning now. 'Did you hear that?'
he said. 'It sounded like ...'
'It's a woman's voice,' I said.'Yes ...'
We glanced around, our heads moving in the same
direction. When we looked ahead of us again she was
there with a couple of young lads, both about her own
age. Beauty.
Seeing her again was, for me, like an electric shock.
I made noises rather than words.
'Last time we saw each other you was nearly dead,'
she said to me. 'Drabalo Mary saved your life.'
'And you,' I said, when I'd found my voice. 'You
came . . .'
'I were there,' Beauty said, nodding her head of
thick black hair at me. 'Me and old Danny Boy had
gone up to see how the Gentleman was getting along
and to take all of them up there some food. We saw
them soldiers shoot everyone.'
'Well, maybe you ought to tell the police. They
don't believe me,' I said. She didn't answer.
A dart of pain hit me and I had to wait until it had
subsided before I spoke again.
'We've come to speak to Lily Lee's family,' I heard
Ernie say. 'Mr Hancock and I need to make
arrangements with them for her burial. Where are
what's left of her family?'
Beauty, I now realised - more than even the first
time I'd seen her - deserved her name. She was short,
nicely plump and with features not unlike those of
Mary Pickford, but she was as dirty and ragged as thetwo frightened boys who stood to either side of her.
Ignoring Ernie, Beauty said to me, 'We'll take you to drabalo Mary. She'll be happy you're alive.'
If I'd thought that was all we were going to learn
from this meeting or that Mary was the only person we
were about to see, I would have protested. But I felt
there was more to it than that. As Ernie helped me
follow the Gypsies into the forest I noticed that
Beauty was scanning around her, as if to check that we
were not being followed. Then when the sirens
signalled the nightly raid her face reflected deep and
abiding terror.

'You wasn't ready to die, I could tell,' the old woman
said to me, as she hung her kettle on the hook over her
fire. This deep into the forest there was no one to
enforce or even care about the blackout, or so it
seemed. 'But you needed the gauje medicine to help
you on your way. I knew that.'
'I - I owe my life to you,' I said, panting as I spoke.
We'd walked for what seemed like hours and I was
done in.
She dismissed my thanks with a tut and a wave of
one thin, dark brown hand.
'We've come to find what remains of the Lee family,'
I said, as I let Ernie help me down on to the ground
beside the old woman's fire. 'We need to bury Lily, Mr
Sutton and I.'Drabalo Mary narrowed her eyes. 'You want money?'
'No,' I said. 'Her - her parents are dead. I just want
to do what's right for her. I - I want to know what her
family, her sisters, want me to do. Her parents and her
brothers' bodies can wait, but Lily must be buried
quickly now.'
To the south of us came the distant flashes and
bangs of the East End taking another hammering. I
tried not to think about my family.
'I - I also n-need,' I said, 'to know for myself
whether you or anyone else from your camp saw my
ladyfriend Miss Jacobs after all the shooting took place
up at Woodford Wells.'
The old woman gazed across the fire at Beauty,
who, some time before, had come to sit silently with
us, and a couple of very young girls, who were also
sitting on the cold, hard ground. The boys who had
escorted us to the camp with Beauty had disappeared.
But there were other tents besides those of Mary and
Beauty, and other Gypsies too, men, women and
children many of whom I recognised from the original
camp. But by the light of their several fires, Mary's
included, I could see that they were more nervous
than before. Some of their number had died and more,
according to Inspector Richards, had been taken away
by the police. I was about to speak again, to plead with
Mary to help me, when I heard a low animal growl
from somewhere rather too close for my comfort.Ernie, who had also heard it, gripped one of my arms.
Drabalo Mary smiled and said, 'Don't worry, my rais, it's only Bruno the bear. Old Eli have him now but
he'm not so happy since his real master passed away.
Bears is intelligent beasts. They know when things
happen.'
'Yes ... Mary . .. Look, about that night. ..'
She smiled. 'You know about the Fourth Nail, my rais. And I trust the Reverend as a man of God so we
have to go right back to the beginning,' she said.
Ernie, frowning, said, 'Fourth nail?'
I hadn't told him about the Nail. I hadn't seen him
for long enough to get into all that. To be honest, I'd
had enough trouble telling the coppers and my family,
in a much shorter version, about something that I knew
had to be, in part, really just a story.
'Oh, Reverend don't know nothing?'
'N-no.'
So Mary told him. Had he been an ordinary Church
of England vicar, I'm sure he would've laughed. If my
understanding is right, they don't approve of relics and
suchlike. They think it popish. But Ernie's church is
what they call 'high', which means it's practically
Catholic, so he was, I could see, very interested. And I
must confess that drabalo Mary's telling of Martin
Stojka's story sent a shiver up my spine, even though I
knew it from before. It was, I suppose, confirmation to
me that everything I had told the police was real.The faces of old Gypsies frequently put me in mind
of my own grandparents - the Duchess's mum and dad.
Lined and dry and tanned to the colour of old wood.
And with the firelight and the flashes from the
explosions peppering the docks illuminating her face,
Mary had the look of a creature not just living in the
forest but belonging to the trees.
When she'd finished her story there was a moment
of silence before Ernie said, 'So what happened to this
Fourth Nail, after the military policemen drove away
with Captain Mansard's body?'
Drabalo Mary didn't answer him. Instead she turned
to me and said, 'My boy Joe took you up the gauje hospital that night and he left you to them.'
'Yes, I know. But Joe wasn't the only one away from
the camp that night, was he?' I said.
Mary exchanged another look with Beauty.
'You'd seen what had happened to your Gentleman,
the Lees and me, hadn't you?' I said to the girl. 'I saw
you go off with some others. I heard you talk about
finding my car. What happened?'
Beauty's lovely face folded in on itself and she began
to cry.
'Victory and Betty Lee was her dad and mum and
them boys was her brothers,' Mary said. 'With Rosie
and Lily gone, she's the oldest now so she had the
right. Took no pleasure in it, mind, as you can see.'
I'd thought that Beauty was a ghostly form of Lilywhen I'd first seen her. Now I understood. She was
their sister. Now there was just her and, it seemed, the
three almost identical little girls at her side.
'What do you mean, "she had the right"?' I asked.
'The right to what?'
Mary was rolling herself a fag now, totally involved
in it. It made me want one so I put my hand into my
pocket for my Woodbines. I was about to light up when
Ernie nudged me and put his hand out. I gave him a fag
and lit it for him while Beauty dried her eyes. Then,
without any preamble, she said, 'We killed them, the
soldiers. They wouldn't give us the Nail so we - I
killed them.'
I squinted at her, the better to appreciate her
smallness. Sarge and his blokes had been big, armed
men. 'But you're--'
'I killed them,' she repeated. 'Coppers come and
took away Danny Boy and Righteous and Job, but they
never killed 'em. It was me.'
I turned to a still-confused Ernie and said, 'She's
saying she killed those three MPs found murdered in
my hearse. They were bristling with guns.' I turned
back to Beauty. 'It just isn't possible that you did that
alone. The sergeant, so the coppers told me, was torn
to pieces! Did you do that?'
Yet again Beauty and Mary exchanged a look.
'That isn't the whole truth, is it?' I said. When they
didn't answer I decided to take a different tack. Therewas, after all, something of my own that I needed to
know. 'What about Hannah - Miss Jacobs? What was
she doing while you were killing those men in my car?'
'Job stopped your car,' Beauty said. 'Threw hisself
on it, he did. Then the rest of us come, many of us,
more'n the coppers will ever know'
'Yes, but they had guns!' I said.
'Yep, and Beauty, she had Bruno,' Mary put in.
The girl blanched. 'Mary!'
'He has to know, girl!' the old woman said. 'He ain't
no musiero.'
'Could get us lelled. Bruno put down!'
'Nah!' Drabalo Mary looked at me and said, 'You
wouldn't get old Bruno killed for what he done to them
as took your lady, would you?'
I didn't answer. Sarge had been torn to shreds,
according to Inspector Richards. I wondered whether
the bear had somehow understood that his master had
been killed or whether Beauty and the others had
maddened him.
'Danny Boy brung your lady back to camp,' Beauty
said. 'She didn't see no killing.'
'And then? What did Miss Jacobs do after that?'
According to Hannah, she had done some 'business' in
the forest after she had escaped from my hearse. But
her version of what had happened and Beauty's
account were already different from each other.
'She stayed here with us,' Beauty said. 'Till 'twassafe for her to go. She ask a lot of questions and we
telled her the truth.' Her big eyes narrowed. 'Why you
want to know what she done?'
I looked at Ernie, who was gazing into the fire. Even
without him and even though I knew he knew, I
would've found it hard to talk about what Hannah
does. But this time I had to. 'She said she went with
men in the forest.' I spoke quickly and averted my eyes
from everyone.
'She telled you that?'
'Yes.' I looked up into the girl's face again. 'Well?'
'And the coppers? She telled them that too?'
'Yes.'
'Well, thank you, Jesus!' I heard drabalo Mary say.
'My goodness, but you've certainly got a good woman
there, my rais! She'm a proper friend to Romany
people, that lady.''
'Hannah lied.' I felt a lot of tension leave me all in
one go.
'Course!' Mary laughed. At that minute I didn't find
it funny. 'She a Jewish lady so she know the evil that
has come in Germany. Our Gentleman, Mr Stojka, he
tells of Romany people being buried alive in the forests
there, he talks of Jews beaten to blood and bone on the
streets.' Her eyes filled with tears. 'Us, we don't
matter, but the Nail, well, that is power, and Mr Hitler
he shouldn't be having any more of that, now, should
he?''By power,' Ernie began, 'what do you mean? Does
it produce miracles?'
I remembered the flash of light I'd seen as Stojka
had taken the Nail out of his jacket and the suddenness
with which it was embedded in Mansard's eye. I
shuddered.
'The Nail gives power to those who have it,' Mary
said, 'power of God, power over folk. But you shouldn't
use it if your heart is black. Then it will go bad and God
and Jesus will be angry with you. It's why the Stojka
family always took care of the Nail. They was good
folk, wanted nothing.' She looked at me then. 'Like
your ladyfriend Miss Jacobs.'
'Yes.' I sighed. 'But by not telling the police the
truth about what happened to her that night, to protect
you, I think she has become very frightened. She's
gone, the coppers say, to the country. She doesn't know
anyone outside London!'
'No, but we do,' Mary said. 'And when the coppers
let Danny Boy and the others go, she'll get back home
after a while. She didn't like the coppers' questions or
yours.'
'So, you know where Hannah is?' I said. I was openmouthed
with shock. 'Why didn't she tell me?'
'Because she didn't want you to have to lie,' Mary
said. 'She'd asked you not to talk of Romany folk when
you was in the hospital and she knew you didn't like
that. So she just trotted off from you without a word.'She smiled. 'She's safe. She's with travelling folk. The
coppers really ain't got nothing on our boys - who'll
never say a word - and they'll have to let them free by
and by. Then she'll be home agin 'fore you know it.'
Many flashes in the sky were followed by the
vibrations from those dropped bombs humming
beneath us. For a moment the sky was almost as bright
as daylight. If I'd had a full and unquestioning belief in
their Holy Nail, then maybe I could have had an
appreciation of how my life and the lives of many
others had been either taken or turned upside-down
because of it. Hitler was plainly very interested but,
then, a madman like him would be. For me the Nail
was something, like Lily's visions, that I didn't
understand. Nevertheless I had to ask what I did next
because I felt I deserved to know. 'S-so where is the
Nail now?'
Ernie stared eagerly at the two women.
'Oh, it's safe,' Mary said. 'Mr Hitler won't get it

'But hasn't the - the chain been b-broken?' I said.
'What I mean is, aren't the Stojka family meant to look
after the Nail? Without them, surely, it can't be safe.'
Mary said nothing, watching only as what I knew,
but until that moment had forgotten, dawned in my
mind and showed itself on my face. As one of what Mr
Lee had called Martin Stojka's 'own', the Nail would
let him, or presumably some other member of hisfamily, look after it, as he'd said, 'for a while'. And who
among his family had survived the carnage at Woodford
Wells? Who had been in the darkness of the forest
when it happened?
'You're going to look after it until you can find a
member of Stojka's family, aren't you?' I said to Beauty
Lee.
'The Gentleman has brothers, dead now,' the girl
said, 'but as for their chavies, we don't know.'
'There's a sister too, Maria Stojka,' Mary added.
'Maybe when this war is over and that German devil
and his generals are dead, Beauty and the girls and me,
we can find that family again.'
'And what if you can't?'I asked.
'We will,' Mary replied, with complete confidence in
her voice.
'What if we lose the war?'
'That won't happen,' Mary said. 'Ain't the way the
world works.'
I looked into the fire. The sky was dark again now
and the drone of German bombers was moving out
towards the east. Although the all-clear had yet to
sound to let the city know the raid was officially over, I
knew that it was. The bombers had come, done what
they had to, and now they were going back to Germany
again - for a little while. They, or others like them,
would be back.
'But we're losing,' I said. 'We're dying.''Frank.' I felt one of Ernie's hands on my shoulder.
'Frank, you have to believe . ..'
I gazed up into his clear blue eyes and I said, 'I

A movement across the other side of the fire caught
my attention: Beauty putting one of her hands in her
blouse. Normally I wouldn't have noticed, but the girl
leaned across the flames towards me and showed me
something that lay in the palm of her hand.
This time the Nail didn't glow. It just dripped a
thick, dark liquid into the flames, which sizzled and
sang as she held it there.
'My God!' I heard Ernie say. 'Is that. . .'
'The Fourth Nail, yes,' Beauty said. 'See how it
bleeds?' And then she looked right at me and said,
'That is the true blood of Christ, Mr Undertaker. It
bleeds for us that our suffering might one day be at an
end. 'Tis a good thing, a pure thing
I contemplated the long, dark spike as the liquid
oozed from its ancient, stubby head in what was, I
admit, a most miraculous fashion. But even then my
brain was searching for how it was done, eyes raking
the girl's hand for signs of injury.
'You must have faith in the power of the good,'
Beauty said.
'But only if you're a bit stupid.' It was a male voice.
A little sharp like a Londoner's, but not as harsh as that.
It certainly wasn't in the least bit countrified, like theGypsies' way of speech. I didn't even have to turn to
see who it was, though, because he'd already moved
himself between me and the fire and taken hold of
Beauty's wrist in one of his big, hard copper's hands.
Chapter Nineteen

'What are you doing here?' I asked Inspector Richards. Just beyond the fire I could see that
Beauty's face was contorted with pain as the
policeman twisted and pummelled the hand with the
Nail in its grasp.
Ernie Sutton, ever the gentleman, jumped to his
feet and said,'Stop that! You're hurting her!'
But Richards's other hand held a gun that he pointed
very quickly at the clergyman.
I swallowed hard to lubricate my throat, then said,
'You've been looking for the Nail all the time.'
But Richards wasn't listening to me.'Give it!' he said
to Beauty, as he dragged her hand into the flames
below. Beauty screamed. I looked at drabalo Mary, my
mind shouting that she wasn't doing anything to help
Beauty Lee. It was only then that I realised Richards
wasn't alone.
'Thank you very much, Miss Lee!' Richards heldthe Nail aloft so that the three men with him could see
it.
Beauty, now in the arms of her little sisters, snarled
and cursed at him as she nursed her injured hand with
her undamaged fingers.
Sitting there watching all of this unfold in front of
me, I'd never felt so useless in my life. In fact, not only
was I useless I was also, I imagined, the reason why
Richards was where he was now.
'You followed me,' I said, as the blood from the Nail
rolled down his hand and on to his wrist.
'Your barmy cousin told me where you were,'
Richards said, not taking his eyes off the Nail. '"Silly
old Frank might want to go out, but we know that .he
shouldn't," is what I said to her. "But don't you worry
your auntie or your cousins about it, love," I said. "You
just come over to my car, parked round the back of
good old Frank's shop, and you tell me. I'll take care of
it for you.'" He laughed.
Bloody stupid Stella!
'I work for Scotland Yard, you see,' he continued.
'People trust us. I knew you'd come looking for these
Gyppos. Still got poor Lily's body and, of course, I'd
put a lot of worries into your mind about what you had
and hadn't seen the night you got shot. I knew if they
were here they'd speak to you. All we had to do was
follow.'
'So why do you want the Nail?' I asked, as one ofRichards's men, a chap of about forty in plainclothes,
pushed Ernie Sutton back towards the ground with the
stock of his pistol. 'Is it money - or are you a friend of
Herr Hitler, like Captain Mansard?'
Richards smiled. 'I'm a bit of both.'
'Oh, well, that's a new one on me,' I said.
'Mansard was put in charge of recovering this item
and he failed,' Richards said. 'If you and the Jewess
hadn't survived, we'd never have known where to start.
You were a real stroke of luck.'
'Oh, good. So, are you saying there's groups of you
Nazis?' I said, getting angry in spite of all my pain.
'You're all over the shop!'
Richards bent down and pushed his face into mine.
'We didn't just fuck off at the end of the thirties, Mr
Hancock. And if you're wondering how we get into the
jobs and places that we do, remember that our leader is
a baronet.'
'Mosley's in prison!' Ernie said. 'Best place for him
too.'
'Oh, shut up, Vicar, for Christ's sake!' Richards said.
'Can't you people see how wrong all your dealing with
Jews and Gypsies and other filthy types is? We have a
chance here, with Adolf Hitler, to clean up our
countries and--'
'Grab whatever the Jews, the Gypsies and other dark
types we don't much like have and take it for
ourselves,' I said.He gave me such a contemptuous look that I was
forced to turn away.
'Well, you would say that, wouldn't you, you dirty
little wog?' he said. 'God, I've been aching to say that
to you, Hancock!' And then he smiled at one of his
men. 'Mr Saville?'
'Yes, Inspector?'
'Go and tell the others they can make a start, will
you?'
'Yes, sir.' He moved off in the direction of the larger
part of the Gypsy camp.
'We've more blokes over there,' Richards explained.
'There's a lot of us.'
'All for one small piece of metal that bleeds,' I said,
as I glanced once again at the still red and sticky thing
in Richards's hand. Because I hadn't actually seen
what had happened between Stojka and Captain
Mansard, I still had it in my head that perhaps the Nail
might attack a person who stole it in order to protect
itself. But, of course, it didn't, because that was
bonkers. It sat in his hand as he talked about our
deaths.
'Once we've finished you lot off we'll be on our way,'
he said. He looked at Ernie and frowned. 'Sorry about
you, of course, Vicar, but if we're to get this treasure
and ourselves out to the estuary tonight... We've
people there waiting for us.'
'To take you to Germany?' Ernie asked.'Well, we can hardly go back to Scotland Yard, now,
can we?' Richards said. 'We've only got a few hours
before they realise something's gone wrong.'
'How do you know that honest coppers from
Scotland Yard haven't followed you?' I asked.
'Because I'm a very senior officer,' Richards said.
'My guv'nors trust me. And those who don't trust me
share my beliefs.' He laughed, then looked at the other
two blokes with him and frowned. 'What's Saville
doing, for God's sake?'
'Don't know, Guv.'

'So, who are you meeting out in the estuary, then?' I
said. No one, I think, wants to die without knowing as
much as possible about why it's happening. 'We've had
MPs and coppers who've turned out to be Nazis. Who
else? A judge, couple of priests ...'
Richards smiled. 'Mr Lovett makes his humble
living fishing for cockles,' he said. 'We have people in
all walks of life who want to help us - you'd be
surprised - many of them high up too, especially in the
police. We don't bother ourselves with recruiting silly
little people from places like your local cop shop, Mr
Hancock.'
I saw Beauty's eyes widen, and I thought it was with
fear so I glanced around to see which of Richards's men
was pointing his gun at her. I was about to ask him - I
knew in vain - to let the girl and her sisters go. But asit happened Beauty's eyes looked as they did for quite
another reason.
'You know, you should think twice or more about
taking the Michael out of stations like Plaistow,'
Sergeant Hill said, as he walked towards Richards with
one hand out in front of him. 'I'll have that weapon
if--'
Richards laughed. 'I can shoot you along with this
lot.' And then I saw his face drop. We were not alone, I
found, as I looked around the fire, first at the Gypsies
and then at Richards's men. There were other coppers
too, some in uniform I recognised from Plaistow, and
some in plainclothes, with guns, I did not.
'Your immediate guv'nor don't, I'm afraid, neither
trust nor agree with you, Mr Richards, and if you want
to know where your Mr Saville and them other blokes
of yours are, they're with that other group of officers
over there.' He pointed towards the larger Gypsy camp.
'Under arrest, for treason.'
I thought that Richards, if not the blokes with him,
might put up a fight. But then I think that he
recognised some of the faces of the men with guns who
now surrounded us. They'd probably worked with him
at Scotland Yard. And, if that was so, he had betrayed
them as much, if not more than, the rest of us.
But although he gave the gun to Sergeant Hill,
seemingly with no resistance, the Nail proved a bit
more tricky. When the sergeant moved forward to takeit from him, Richards stepped backwards and clutched
the gory thing to his chest.
Sergeant Hill sighed. 'Look, mate,' he said to
Richards, 'hanging on to what isn't yours ain't going to
do you no good. Give it to me.'
'No.' Richards stepped back towards the edge of the
fire.
'It's no use to you!' Sergeant Hill persisted. 'You
don't know what it is or how to use it. Give it--'
'No!'
'Give it to the sergeant, please, Inspector,' one of the
plainclothes men said, as he trained his pistol on
Richards. 'I'd hate to have to shoot you, sir.'
Richards looked mad. Before, had I been asked, I
would've said he had to be one of the sanest men
on the face of the earth. But he wasn't now. Ernie
Sutton opened his mouth but before he could speak,
Richards said, 'Save it, Vicar.' Then the Nail was in the
fire. The inspector's body was between me and it, so
I hadn't seen him drop it, but he must have done
so. And then he ran. He was pursued and he was
asked to stop and give himself up twice before they
shot him. Having started firing, however, it was as if
they couldn't stop. Once he was down, at least five
shots made sure that he would never get up again.
Ernie, his hands over his ears, shivered with fright as I
watched Sergeant Hill look straight ahead as if nothing
was happening.I couldn't understand it. 'He was a Nazi,' I said. 'He
could've told you things!'
'I think that Mr Lovett the humble cockle-fisher'll
be able to fill in quite a few gaps, Mr Hancock,'
Sergeant Hill replied.
'You were listening ...'
'We were right behind the lot of you, all the way,' he
said. 'Bent coppers don't deserve to live, they--' And
then I saw his face crease as he pointed towards the fire
and said, 'Look!'
Beauty Lee had both hands in the flames. Her face,
calm and cool as a cucumber, was gazing downwards as
her hands grasped the Nail. It was almost as if the fire
had suddenly, to her, taken on the character of cold
water. And as she pulled the Nail out of the flames she
appeared to be unhurt.
'When the right person have it, Nail can't do him or
her no harm,' drabalo Mary said, in answer to my silent
question. 'Coppers best leave what ain't theirs to those
who's meant to have it.'
Beauty Lee placed the bloody Nail in the pocket of
her skirt, then returned to the arms of her sisters.
'This is Inspector Berger from Scotland Yard,' Sergeant
Hill said, as he introduced a short, Jewish bloke in
plainclothes to Ernie and myself. Drabalo Mary shoved
a cup into the sergeant's hand. 'Ah, tea,' he said.
'Thank you, my dear.'The old woman, who'd already given the rest of us
drinks from her kettle, sat down with Ernie and me,
then turned expectantly to Inspector Berger. The
Scotland Yard man sat on the ground and said,
'Richards's original boss, a bloke called Brown, had
been in with Mosley's lot back in the thirties. He got
his cards but we didn't know for certain about Richards
until he started getting involved with you, Mr
Hancock.'

The light from drabalo Mary's fire threw his sharp
features into deep shadow, making him black and red,
devil-like - although I knew that what I was seeing was
only frightening the Christian side of my brain. In
India some of the devils have white faces, and features
that are fat and bloated, rather than sharp. But at that
moment Berger was every inch the terrifying fictional
Jewish figure that Herr Hitler is so fond, it is said, of
portraying.
'Some months ago the Yard got intelligence that
someone was in this country carrying a religious relic
what Hitler wanted. The Fuhrer's keen on that sort of
thing, so we had to look for it. But when we was told
that this Martin Stojka was a Gypsy we had to think
very hard about how we might find him.'
'They do look out for their own, the Romany people,'
Sergeant Hill said, without thinking. Then, suddenly
remembering where he was, and who he was with, heturned to Mary and said, 'That being a good thing, of
course.'
Mary grunted.
'Every force in the country was looking for Martin
Stojka,' Berger continued.
'The photograph I was shown of him was a bad
likeness,' I said.
'Which didn't help. But then suddenly along comes
this Captain Mansard of the Military Police saying as
how he'd seen Stojka up in Epping Forest. He hadn't
managed to catch him but he was convinced that he
was being hidden there by fellow Gypsies. The MPs
were already up in the forest searching for deserters so
it was thought best, as I was told then, to let them carry
on and find Stojka at the same time. I suppose Mansard
must've seen him, although he never found him again
until the night both he and Stojka died.'
'I can tell you a bit about how that might have
happened in a little while,' I said, and glanced at Mary,
who shrugged as if to say, 'Tell him about the Head or
not, it's all the same to me.' Once he was found, was
Stojka to be interned or imprisoned?'
'Neither,' Berger replied. 'For our part, the police
told the public that Stojka was a German what needed
to be interned. He was frightened, trusted no one. We
just needed to get him in so we could ask him about
Hitler, who, we'd heard, he had met. It was Mansard
who called him a spy, so people'd help him find Stojkaand what Stojka had. We were a bit perturbed when
Sergeant Hill reported to the Yard what he'd heard
Mansard was saying, but Inspector Richards, who was
the contact between ourselves and the Military Police,
wasn't unduly worried so we let Mansard get on with

Ernie Sutton said, 'You didn't know that either
Richards or Mansard was a traitor? Was it a coincidence
that they were working together?'
Berger put his hand into his coat pocket and took out
a packet of fags, which he offered around before he
replied. 'No, of course it wasn't,' he said. 'This
business goes a lot higher than Richards.'
One of the men standing behind Inspector Berger
cleared his throat very obviously.
'But I can't tell you anything about that because me
and my guv'nors still have to deal with it.'
'Guv?'
A group of coppers were carrying away Richards's
body.
'Take it to the car,' Berger said, to the tallest bloke.
'Then come back here. You and me'll need to have a chat about this Lovett bloke Richards was due to go
and meet.'
'Chances are if he fishes cockles, he's from near
Southend,' the tall man replied.
'We'll have a little chat with Saville and some of
them other charmers Richards had recruited in a bit,'Berger said. The group carrying Richards's body
moved back into the undergrowth.
I wondered who 'high up' at the Yard had been
involved with Richards and, by extension, Mansard
too. It was cold anyway and I was still quite ill that
night, but the thought that one of our top coppers
might be a traitor made me feel still colder. I hadn't
realised that so many people had leanings towards
Hitler and the Nazis. But as Richards had said, where
had I thought all of the thousands who had followed
Mosley in the thirties had gone?
'It all went wrong for Mansard on that night you got
shot, Mr Hancock.' Quite an understatement, but I
nodded. 'Richards, of course, was the obvious choice to
investigate a very queer do, so that was what
happened.'
'When did you realise something wasn't right?'
'It happened bit by bit. The MPs being found dead
in your hearse and you turning up alive at Whipps
Cross sent Richards into a frenzy. The whole thing was
queer, especially when it was discovered that Martin
Stojka was one of the victims. We couldn't work out
how it had all gone so wrong for Mansard. We asked the
Military Police for Mansard's records. It was me who
recognised the name back from his Mosley days.
Called himself Mr Clive Gillespie in the thirties.'
I told Berger about my Hannah and her experiences
with Mansard/Gillespie.'It was Dr Craig at Whipps Cross hospital who really
made some of us up the Yard, mainly Richards's
guv'nor, think about Richards in the way we did,'
Berger continued. 'According to Richards, Mansard
and his boys had only killed Stojka and the other
Gypsies because they were defending theirselves. The
Gypsies was the aggressors.'
Drabalo Mary, who had been joined again by Beauty
Lee, made a low, disgusted growl in her throat.
'Dr Craig said that the way the Gypsies had been
found showed that they had been executed. They were
unarmed and they'd been executed,' Berger said. 'You,
Mr Hancock, according to Richards, was either a traitor
yourself or raving mad.'
*Which was when the Yard got back to me,' Sergeant
Hill said. 'I told them you was neither a traitor nor
raving.'
'Just mad?'
Sergeant Hill shuffled his feet uneasily.
'So I went down to Plaistow to see for myself,'
Inspector Berger said. 'I talked to Sergeant Hill, who, I
knew, had had doubts about Mansard from the off and
who also had an ... an "interest", shall we say? Then
when I come out of the station I took a little ball of
chalk around your manor, Mr Hancock. Given the
times we live in now, I was surprised to see so many of
Richards's young officers apparently looking at your
gaff for no good reason. You was wounded, as far as Iknew, and couldn't be going anywhere. But Richards
had to think that you was, so I had you watched meself.
I told Sergeant Hill that if you did move he was to call
the Yard and tell me. When the call came, I followed
Sergeant Hill and his boys.'
'Who followed Richards first and then us?' I said.
'Yes, Mr Hancock.'
'Not really knowing what you were going to find.'
'No, not really. Something was wrong but I couldn't
say for certain that Richards was a traitor until tonight.
That's why we held back for so long - so we could
understand what was going on. The Nail, as far as we
could tell, was missing, and we had to follow any
person who might possibly lead us to it, same as
Richards, really.'
'Richards condemned himself out of his own
mouth,' Ernie said.
'Yes, sir, he did.'
'So how much of our conversing did you hear then?' drabalo Mary, suddenly involved again, asked Berger.
'All of it. From the moment Miss Lee met Mr
Hancock and the Reverend here.'
Mary looked at Beauty who said, 'Oh, dordi!'
'Lucky for us your Bruno was well chained down
tonight, wasn't it?'
But it was more than just the bear's life at stake now,
if Berger really had heard all of our conversation. It was
Beauty Lee too, and she knew it.'Can I give Mary here the Nail afore you take me
away?' she asked.
'No,' he said. 'Give it to Sergeant Hill. Do it now.' It
was plain that he would brook no argument.
Sergeant Hill extended his hand towards the girl and
spoke at some length to her in pure Romany.Chapter Twenty

For once I was just an ordinary mourner at a
"slightly unusual funeral. Arthur was
conducting, and making a jolly good job of it. It
wasn't easy, with so many Gypsies jostling for position
around the grave, but Arthur handled it all very calmly
and with dignity, and I was proud of him. Lily Lee's
funeral had been organised in one single morning with
most of the responsibility falling on to Arthur and Ernie
Sutton's shoulders. But it had needed to be like that,
because poor Lily's body wouldn't wait any longer. I
heaved a sigh of relief when Walter and Doris's uncle
Wolfie lowered her coffin on to her sister Rosie's. As
soon as the ropes were pulled out from under the coffin
and the bearers had moved away, the Gypsies came
with their offerings of coins and banknotes, which they
threw on to the lid of the coffin. Lily's sisters, Beauty
included, howled to their two dead siblings below.
'Won't be long before you have to do this all overagain, will it, Mr H?' Sergeant Hill whispered to me, as
we watched the Gypsies take part in the final drama of
Lily Lee's short life.
'No, it won't,' I said. Only the night before we'd all
been in the forest with Inspector Richards and his
murderous gang of traitors. Now we were burying Lily,
and the next day I was back at work again for the
funerals of Mr and Mrs Lee, all their boys and Rosie's
husband Edward. Horatio Smith had already been
buried by Albert Cox and his Canning Town firm,
which left only the once mysterious Martin Stojka. But
I knew nothing about how he was to be disposed of,
beyond that Sergeant Hill - a man I now realised I
didn't truly know at all - was to arrange it.
'' 'Come on,' Sergeant Hill said, to the small group of
coppers, from Plaistow and Scotland Yard, who stood
inside the cordon that many other coppers had thrown
around these proceedings. 'Take a stone each and place
them round the grave. Be careful not to leave any gaps.'
The Gypsies moved aside to let a very old custom
with their people take place. Stones around a grave,
they believe, can restrain the dangerous tnulo or spirit
of the dead, should it wish to move among the living
once again. The coppers involved, young and old, did
their job with reverence.
Inspector Berger was one of the Scotland Yard
contingent, looking on, like me, with admiration. 'I
don't know what we'd've done without Sergeant Hill,'he said. 'Only he knew the real importance of Martin
Stojka and his family'
I'm used to it being obvious what a person is.
Everyone can see what I am and I've never tried to
pretend otherwise - I've never had to. Sergeant Hill,
with his fair skin, blue eyes and military moustache,
was a normal English bloke, as far as I'd known. And
his father had been just that. His mother, though, had
come originally from Budapest. Word in some quarters
was that she was a Jewess. But she wasn't. Still living
right up to this day, Irene Hill is a Gypsy, who had
taught her son all about the customs and beliefs of the
European travelling people. So he knew what was
expected of him at Lily Lee's funeral.
'God knows what Sergeant Hill and myself and
maybe you, too, Mr Hancock, would have to endure in
Hitler's Germany,' Berger said, as he watched Ernie
Sutton bless the graves of the Lee sisters once more.
'You know Hill speaks the Romany lingo, don't you?
Incredible.'
I hadn't known - or, rather, the few Romany words I
had heard him say I had either forgotten or dismissed.
We use such a lot of words from all over the globe down
in our manor - Yiddish, Hindi, Romany, Arabic. 'Well,
at least old Herr Hitler won't be able to get his hands
on the Nail now,' I said.
'No.' Berger's expression told me he thought all that
sort of thing was so much tosh.'Did Sergeant Hill--'
'I don't know where he's keeping the thing, only
that it's safe,' Berger said, and held up a hand as if to
bat away my question. 'The Lee girls can have it back
when this war's over, if it ever is.' Then, seeing that
Sergeant Hill and his men had completed their circle
of stones, he excused himself and set off in the
direction of the cordon of uniformed officers who hid
what we were doing from public gaze. In spite of her
death and all the doubt that had been cast on her
experiences by the arrest of Gypsies in her group, not
to mention the subsequent deaths of her parents and
brothers, there was still a lot of interest in and some
reverence for Lily Lee. Not a few people had wanted
to" pay their respects when they'd seen a load of
Gypsies on the move up to the East London cemetery.
The coppers made them all stand behind the cordon
until the ceremony was over. Now, for a short time,
they would be let in to pay their respects. Women and
girls, mainly, placed tiny bunches of half-dead flowers
beside the hole the grave-diggers were now filling in.
I saw that it was getting dark.
'We're having a wake for everyone tomorrow, after
Mum and everyone else's funeral,' Beauty Lee said to
me. 'Will you come?'
She'd appeared at my side, suddenly dry-eyed and
calm.
'Yes,' I said. We both watched the gauje pass withtheir little offerings, their crosses and their tears.
'Beauty, do you have any idea what Lily saw over by
that tree?'
'No. I know what I believe about it, though,' she
said.
'What's that?'
'I think it were Rosie's mulo,'1 she said, 'but not come
to do our Lily harm. Rosie and Lily loved each other
and Rosie's Edward. Rosie just didn't want to go. Her mulo were a good thing, I think. It were love.'
The gauje crossed themselves, some even bowed to
the grave before they moved on. But that was all right.
The Virgin Mary, even if you don't believe in her, like
me, is a symbol of love and suffering. Lily and her
'virgin' Rosie had suffered in their own ways and so, to
my mind, what these unknowing gauje were doing
wasn't wrong. For a short time, Lily Lee had given
them the miracle all people at war want: a sign of some
sort that we are right and also that we are not alone.
I travelled home to the shop in Inspector Berger's car
- Arthur took the Lees back to their camp in the
hearse. I was pleased to have the opportunity to talk to
the Scotland Yard man away from the funeral
proceedings. I still had a lot of questions from the
previous night. He had not, after all, arrested Beauty
Lee for the murders of the MPs she had committed in
my hearse and, I now found, he had let the other
Gypsies in police custody go too.'Beauty Lee killed men who were traitors. She's a
heroine,' Berger said, as his car bounced up and down
in the many potholes that scar almost every road now.
'Not that she's saying anything about it herself.'
'Yes, I understand that,' I said, 'but how is the Yard
going to explain all those deaths up in the forest and in
Leyton?'
He pulled the car into Bethell Avenue and brought
it to a halt. 'We're not,' he said, as he turned a pair of
cold eyes on me.
'But--'
'Mansard and the others were killed in the line of
duty, probably by gangsters they'd disturbed during
the course of their investigations in the forest. There's
a tot of black-market activity in this part of town.'
'Yes,' I said, 'but that story isn't true, is it?'
Berger sighed. 'Mr Hancock,' he said, 'we live at a
time when a few people have to make big decisions for
many. Mr Churchill is one and I, to a lesser degree, am
another. What has to be true for the many is that the
MPs, our boys, were killed by nasty criminal types and
that the poor Gypsies also suffered their losses. Lily
Lee indeed saw the Virgin Mary, which means that
God is on our side and all's right with the world.' He
pointed a finger into my face. 'You say nothing, Mr
Hancock. I can put you into Claybury if I feel so
inclined.'
I don't like being threatened but even I am realisticenough to know when I'm well and truly beaten. I kept
my trap shut.
'Censorship is a useful thing,' Berger said, as he
started the engine of the car again. 'It has its place.'
I wanted to say that from what we'd heard Herr
Hitler would probably agree with him on that
score. But, again, I didn't even think of opening my
mouth.
Then suddenly, as he turned into the Barking Road,
he said, 'Oh, I've sent a car to fetch your friend Miss
Jacobs.'
'Hannah!'
'With an old bloke who makes them models of people
and animals you see in fairgrounds, a Gyppo. Lives in a
village up round Harlow called Matching Green. Right
out in the sticks, apparently.'
The Gypsies had said they'd hidden Hannah well.
'We need to know the truth from her,' Berger said.
I had to say, 'Why's that?'
He drew the car to a halt outside the shop and
turned his ice cold eyes to me again. 'Because if we do
survive this war, one day, a long time into the future,
people will be able to get into our files and they will
deserve to know the truth. We found the cockle-fishing
traitor Richards told you about at Leigh-on-Sea, in
Essex, and he told us some interesting things about
one of my guv'nors. He'll leave the force, and for years
no one will know what happened to him. Then they'llopen the files. But we'll all be dead and gone by that
time. Beyond any blame, you see.'
'And that makes what you're doing all right?'
'Anything that means you and yours survive is all
right in a war, Mr Hancock,' Berger said, as I pulled
myself slowly out of his car. 'You were in the first lot,
you should know that.'
'The first lot went far beyond survival, Inspector
Berger. Don't talk to me about it.'
I began to walk towards my battered, boarded-up
shop, glad that Beauty Lee wasn't going to prison but
aware of how different things might have been under
'normal' circumstances. Outside this war, Beauty Lee,
the Gypsy, would have hanged for what she did and no
'excuses' about avenging her parents or recovering any
holy relic would have saved her. Not even Berger, the
Jew, would have put in a good word. But, then, there
are people who are not Christian, there are foreigners
and then there are Gypsies . .. They are always at the
bottom of everyone's pile.
'I'll tell Miss Jacobs you want to see her, shall I?'
Berger called to me.
I didn't glance back at him, but I did say, 'Yes.'

'They don't call this a wake, it's a pomana,' Sergeant
Hill said, as he tucked into a large wedge of rabbit pie.
'It's a meal they hold just after a person's death, and
then at so many weeks and months until a year haspassed. Only then, after that final meal, can the
mourning stop.'
It was funny seeing him sitting on the ground in his
copper's uniform. He didn't seem comfortable, in spite
of his Gypsy blood.
'That's the very old way that is,' drabalo Mary said,
with a big measure of admiration in her voice. But
Sergeant Hill was going to be looking after the Gypsies'
most prized possession for the foreseeable future so it
was encouraging that Mary and Beauty liked him. Not
that they'd had much choice in the matter. Berger had
told Beauty to hand over the Nail to Sergeant Hill and,
once he'd spoken to her and she'd been told the
Romany-speaking copper was himself a diddikai, part
Gypsy, she had done so. Compared to the alternative of
her dragging it around the countryside with her, always
afraid that it might be stolen, it made sense. If and when
this war ends, Sergeant Hill will give the Nail back to
Beauty whose ambition is to journey to Germany and
find whatever might remain of the Stojka family. As the
girl says, any Gypsy can have the Nail but it only belongs
to someone with the name of Stojka.
We'd had to borrow three vehicles from other local
firms to get all of the dead Lee family members to the
cemetery. I'd been in charge for the first time since I'd
been shot, and although I'd felt tired, I'd managed,
with the help of my lads, Albert Cox and his boys from
Canning Town and a couple of men from a firm in Bow,to get the Gypsies where they needed to be. Now,
sitting on the ground beside my mother and Doris
Rosen, both of whom had come to pay their respects to
the Lees, I smoked in silence as others filled their faces
from the Gypsies' meagre larder. Still weak, I hardly
noticed when Beauty Lee came to sit next to me.
'We're leaving tomorrow,' she said. 'Once we've
dealt with Bruno.'
I looked at her questioningly.
'Mary give him summat to send him off gently this
morning,' Beauty said. 'Old Eli was with him when he

I wondered if I'd heard her right. 'You killed Bruno?'
She pointed to where her little sisters were smashing
prates against a tree. 'We have to get rid of all the dead
people's things,' she said matter-of-factly. 'Bruno was
my dad's bear.'
'Yes, but when you told me that Bruno had,' I
lowered my voice to a whisper, 'killed that sergeant,
you were frightened I'd tell the coppers and get the
bear destroyed.'
'Couldn't have the coppers kill him, no,' Beauty
said. 'That's wrong. They wouldn't bury him right.
Creatures have mulos too, you know. We'll do him
proper tonight with money and stones and a few old
spells from drabalo Mary. Then we'm be off.'
'Where to?'
'Travelling. Go up by old 'Zekiel's first.''Is that the--'
'Now, Mr Hancock,' the girl said, smiling now in
spite of her sorrow, 'if there was one thing you wanted
what would that be?'
'Why?'
Beauty shrugged again. 'Just askin'.'
The Duchess, who had been listening to the last part
of our conversation, said, 'Well, for me it would have to
be an end to this war.'
I took one of her hands in mine. 'Well, that's about
the best thing anyone can hope for. So I suppose ...'
'Yes, but what else is there?' Beauty asked. 'There
must be something.'
I heard some noises behind my back, but I didn't
take any more notice of them than I did of the chatter
and clatter around the Gypsies' food and drink.
Sergeant Hill was still chewing rabbit pie (probably not
alone in wondering where the poor beast had come
from), Doris was listening quietly to one of the Gypsy
girls telling her about her life, and people were pouring
beer, smoking and talking of anything other than the
dead, as is the Gypsy way.
'I'd like to see my friend Hannah - Miss Jacobs,' I
said, after a while, 'but I expect she's still answering
questions from the police. I'll see her in a bit, I'm sure.'
I had asked Berger to tell Hannah to come and see
me and I was sure that at some point she would. In the
meantime there was nothing more I could do.'I'm sure you will too,' Beauty replied. Then she
looked behind me and said, "Zekiel?'
Following her gaze I found myself staring into the
face of a tiny, wrinkled old man. He wore a red tailcoat
and top hat like a circus ringmaster and he was standing
in front of a booth like the one I'd seen in Lily's tent,
with the Head, Martin Stojka. For a moment I gazed at
Beauty, horrified. But strangely, to me, the girl smiled.
'Mr Ezekiel Gaskin of Matching Green, in Essex, is
a magician and a maker of illusions,' she said. 'But this,
Mr Hancock, is real.'
The little man stood in front of the booth and waved
his arms. When he moved away I saw Hannah's head
floating on the table. I heard my mother say, 'Oh, my
goodness, how very clever!' But I was speechless.
Hannah saw me, smiled and said, 'You know, H, that
Mr Gaskin can walk in front of this table just like that
Arab bloke Davy Green once saw.'
And to prove that this was so, Ezekiel Gaskin
walked in front of the table. Try as I might I couldn't
see a reflection of anything underneath Hannah's
floating head.
'Bloody
'So, do you think we should tell David Green about
this or not?' Hannah said.

Epilogue

Sergeant Hill doesn't talk about the Fourth Nail
to anyone except me, and then not often.
'I do take it out and look at it occasionally,' he
said, a little while ago. But he didn't say whether he did
it at the station or at his home. And I didn't ask. I have
Hannah back; my mother, sisters and even Stella are
managing. Doris copes. Ernie Sutton has now learned
his lesson and has become genuinely fond of my
Jewish girl. I don't need to know much more.
The sergeant, I've known for years, lives with his
mother on Tredegar Road, Bow. I'm not often up that
way, but last night, after the bombing, I found myself
there, among tall old houses all blacked out and silent.
I couldn't've told which one was Sergeant Hill's had
my life depended on it. I wasn't even thinking of him
as I began to recover from my latest terrified run. I was
going home until something caught my attention. It
was a light and it was in a ground-floor window of oneof the houses. I looked around for a warden, as you do.
But then I saw what the light was and I just watched it
until the blackout curtain was pulled to shut me out,
and presumably the rest of the world.
Sergeant Hill and his mother, Irene, were sitting in a
darkened room. On the table between them lay
something light and bright that I had last seen in the
hands of Martin Stojka. Once more, the Fourth Nail
was glowing brightly.

333

Author's Notes

Romanies (Gypsies) about a thousand years ago, those people
commonly known as Gypsies began their long
__ -- wandering journey from their place of origin in
northern India to the Middle East, Europe and
beyond. Their proper name of Romany was unknown
in the lands through which they travelled and, due to
the different way they looked and behaved, people in
Europe called them Egyptians or Gypsies. They were not
always welcomed or understood and many of the
legends that surrounded them were sinister in
character. Gypsies, it was said, had forged the nails that
had been used to crucify Jesus. Over the centuries they
were classed as sorcerers, witches, criminals and agents
of the Ottoman Empire. They were frequently
persecuted and sometimes put to death. However it
wasn't until Adolf Hitler became Chancellor ofGermany in 1933 that a nation took systematic action
against the Romany travellers.
Romanies do not call what happened to their people
in places like Dachau a holocaust, it is called the Porrajmos - the devouring. Designated asocials by
Hitler, the Romanies were worked to death,
experimented upon by Josef Mengele, beaten, shot,
gassed and, in some cases, even buried alive. Because
of the shifting nature of their existence, no one really
knows how many Romanies died in Hitler's death
camps. Estimates range from between a quarter of a
million people to one and a half million souls. The
memory of the Porrajmos haunts the Romany people
still and in this book I have turned an old legend about
them around in order to explore their courage and
resilience as well as the suffering they endured during
the Second World War.
The language used by Romanies across the world is
an Indo-Aryan tongue that has its roots in Punjabi and
Hindi. There are many spoken dialects, three of which
are to be found in Europe: Dom, spoken by the Domari
in central and eastern Europe; Lorn, by the Lomarvren
of central Europe; and Rom spoken by the Romani of
Western Europe. However these dialects do share
many similarities and so my Romany characters, who
come from western and eastern Europe, understand
each other's dialects and customs. This may not always
be so, but I have used this device in order to facilitate
the reader's understanding and, I hope, enjoyment of
the book.East End Anti-fascism and
The Battle of Cable Street

Sunday 4 October 1934

In the 1930s a British politician and aristocrat
called Baronet Oswald Mosley (1896-1980) rose to prominence as the leader of a party called the
British Union of Fascists. Otherwise known as the
Blackshirts, these people modelled themselves on
Hitler's followers and were violent anti-Semites who
took great delight in terrorising the poor Jewish
population of the East End. And although when caught
the perpetrators of these acts were punished, when
Mosley wanted to march his Blackshirts through the
East End in what he assured the authorities would be
a peaceful way, he was given permission to do so. Local
Jewish and Communist organisations had other ideas
and when the marchers reached the mainly Jewish roadcalled Cable Street in Stepney, they fought to keep the
Fascists out. So violent was the struggle that the
Commissioner of Police was eventually forced to
curtail Mosley's march and that night a great victory
over Fascism was celebrated in pubs all over the East
End. But many, many people did march with Mosley
on that day and I have often wondered where they
went after the defeat of Cable Street. This book,
though fictional, addresses that question.

The Disembodied Head Illusion


What is referred to in the novel as the 'Head' or
'Egyptian Head' illusion is based upon a trick
that was first performed by the English
magician Colonel Stodare in London in 1865. This
trick, which was called the 'Sphinx', involved the
apparently sentient disembodied head of an ancient
Egyptian man appearing on the top of a table. It could
move its eyes and speak and at the end of the act, when
Stodare covered it up with a box, the Sphinx
disappeared leaving behind it only a small pile of ashes.
How was it done?
First take one four-legged, round-topped table and
remove one leg. Position the table so that one of the
remaining legs points straight out towards the
audience, with the other legs at equal distances to

Ieither side. Then fix two mirrors from the front leg to
those at either side at 90-degree angles. The mirrors
must be clean and must be constructed to cover the
whole distance between the bottom of the table and
the floor. Behind the mirrors, cut a hole in the table top
through which the head may appear and then surround
the table on three sides with a booth and/or curtains
which are reflected into the mirrors. Then place the
performer under the table until the audience is
distracted from the set by a puff of smoke or other misdirectional
device, whereupon his or her head pushes
through the hole in the top of the table. The mirrors
reflecting the curtains at the side of the set create the
illusion that the audience is looking underneath the
table and the head to the curtains at the rear. However,
the magician performing this trick must be careful
where he or she stands in relation to the set lest his legs
or other body parts reflect in the mirrors and give the
trick away. Simple!
On the other hand, how this trick may be done
where the magician, and sometimes the audience too,
walks around the head, I do not know. My mother saw
such an illusion back in the 1950s and is still baffled by
it to this day. But then maybe that particular trick was
not an illusion at all. Maybe that really was magic.

Barbara NadelGlossary
Ackers	slang
for money, from the Egyptian
akka (money)
'Atchin 'tan	Romani - stopping-place
Av	Romani - come
Ball of chalk	rhyming slang for walk
Bonkers	slang - mad, crazy
Butchers	rhyming slang, 'butchers hook' look
Chavies	Romani - children
Crackers	slang - mad, crazy
Diddikai	Romani - someone with half
Romany, half gaujo blood
Dinilo	Romani - stupid, foolish
Dordi	Romani - dear {Oh, dordi! = Oh
dear!)
Drabalo	Romani - doctor
Drom	Romani - roadFriar's balsam an aromatic inhalation to relieve
respiratory diseases and infections
Gaff slang - home
Gas mantle replaceable element of a gas lamp
Gaujo Romani - a non-Romany (plural
gauje)
Ha'porth slang -- silly person; also meaning a
'halfpenny's worth' Jock slang - Scotsman
Kate rhyming slang, Kate Karney - army.
Kate Karney was a nineteenth-
century music-hall star from Canning Town
Lelled Romani -- arrested
	f
Lingo slang - language
Marime Romani - contamination by the dead
Meshuggeneh Yiddish - a crazy person
Mulo Romani -- spirit of the dead
e Mullo Romani - death
Muskero Romani - police
Mutt and Jeff Rhyming slang - deaf
Pinny apron (pinafore)
Pomana Romani - meal to mark the passing
of the dead
Rais Romani - gentleman
Romanipe Romani - the Romany way (of life)
Schtum Yiddish - quietSit shiva Yiddish - Orthodox Jewish seven-day mourning period
Tan Romani - tent
Tom slang - prostitute
Tosh slang - rubbish
Two and eight rhyming slang - state
Va Romani - yes