Riptide

§ 39

Cal knew at once that this was different. St Alkmund’s, whatever the stink, however much it looked like some hellish gothic vision, had had women and children-women cooking, women putting children to bed, children playing, children refusing to be put to bed, while men played cards or shoved coins up and down a board with the same glee with which Cal used to race frogs. St Martin’s held naught but men-and they played no games. By comparison it was quiet, not silent, constant interruptions, shouting and cussing, meaningless interjections-and off to one side, in the shadows, standing alone, an upright, crazed monologuist conversing with person or persons invisible.

And the smell-if St Alkmund’s had been chalked up to the cliché ‘humanity’, how could St Martin’s be less than human? It reeked of beer, sweat and dirt-the penetrating cheesy smell of the unwashed, great or not, that could put a dead skunk to shame.

‘Walter, do we have the right place? This is a dive-it’s a shelter for bums and drunks.’

‘I know,’ said Stilton. ‘Surprised me too-but that was the tip-off. Down with the down-and-outs in St Martin-in-the-Fields.’

A young curate approached them-the permanent smile of the righteous rictus-stapled to his lips.

‘Can I help you? It’s not often we get a visit from the Constabulary these days.’

Stilton didn’t bat an eyelid at this. Just flashed his warrant card and said, ‘D’ye know Fish Wally?’

The young priest beamed. ‘I should have known. Our Mr Wallficz. There he is, right at the back under the pavement arches.’ He pointed down the crypt. Cal and Stilton stepped over the prostrate, drunken, incontinent bodies and headed towards the glow of a kerosene lamp.

A ragged man sat bolt upright on an upturned crate. Half a dozen newspapers scattered around his feet, another clutched in hands that seemed to Cal to be more claw than flesh, the arc of the lamp shining upon on it. But he wasn’t reading it. He stared off into a lost middle distance, lost in some landscape of the mind.

Stilton waved a hand in front of his eyes. Fish Wally blinked once and said, ‘Stilton? Long time no Stilton. I had heard you were looking for me.’

Stilton pulled another beer crate closer and plonked himself down on it. Cal stood back, half in the shadows, outside of the small circle of light, watching.

‘If you knew I were looking, why didn’t you call me? For that matter you were supposed to tell us if you moved digs-but you didn’t, did you?’

Fish Wally looked lazily at Stilton, heavy-lidded eyes half closed.

‘The answer is the same to both questions. I have other things on my mind.’

‘Such as?’

‘We’re about to be invaded. That may mean nothing to you. You come from a complacent race. We Poles have seen it all before-I somewhat more recently than 1066.’

‘All the same, you should have told us. You don’t want me reporting this to the Squadron Leader, do you?’

‘Do your worst, Stilton. He knows I am kosher. And so do you. You have found me-you have the larger part of my attention, for the while at least-what else matters?’

‘Since you ask…’

Stilton laid out the photos across his knees, on top of Fish Wally’s newspaper.

‘These two were in the Marquess of Lincoln, Monday last. So were you.’

Fish Wally picked up the photographs, angled them into the light.

‘The young one-the blond one. He asked me to help him get a room. The older one merely said he might have to move in the foreseeable future. I told him to tell me later-I do not deal in maybe. I never saw him again.’

‘You’re sure it was them?’

‘The scar on the blond puzzles me. It is a likeness this sketch, no more-it has not caught the man.’

Stilton twisted his neck to look up at Cal. The first acknowledgement he’d made of his presence since they crossed the room.

‘Never mind,’ he said to Fish Wally. ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

‘Yes-it’s him.’

‘And the older one?’

‘Definitely him.’

‘Good-now, did you get the young one a room?’

‘Of course. I took him to my cousin.’

‘Your cousin?’

‘My cousin. Why else did you think I came to London? Did you think I washed up on these shores like Gulliver in Brobdingnag? Stilton, I told you last year I had family. I have a cousin Casimir-been here since 1932. A naturalised Englishman. He lets rooms. I send him people from time to time. Mostly I send him Poles. But we would consider any refugee.’

‘I’m not addled, Wally-I remember you had a cousin. I tried to find him three or four days back. I don’t recall that he let rooms.’

‘In those days he didn’t. He had one room on Fulham High Street. Things changed after the fall of France. You know that as well as I. We have lived in a new world ever since. The blond man said he was Czech. Sounded Czech to me. So we arranged to meet outside the London Palladium just after closing time. I took him round to Cash Wally.’

‘Cash Wally?’

‘Casimir-Casimir Wallficz. Hence, since yours is a tongue that must mangle what it cannot spell, “Cash Wally”. A man aptly named. A greedy man in every respect. A mean man. I live on the handouts he gives me and the work I can pick up.’

Fish Wally held up his mangled hands.

‘You will appreciate, Walter, that is not much.’

‘And where does Cash Wally have this house of exiles?’

‘23b Marshall Street-the one in Soho. As you would say, spitting distance from the Palladium. I even know the room number. He is in four-the second-floor front.’

Stilton quickly scribbled down the address.

‘And you Wally, where are you living now?’

‘I have a new room in Drury Lane.’

‘From Drury Lane you could shelter in the tube at Holborn or Covent Garden or the Aldwych. Why on earth would you want to come down here? If your cousin pays you a wage and you’ve a room of your own, why here, why down here with the drunks and the tramps?’

Fish Wally looked off into the crypt-stared a moment at the ranting monologuist, then fixed his gaze on Stilton and sighed. It seemed to Cal that through his precise, cultured English he was talking to Stilton as though he were an exasperating child to whom he must state the obvious once too often.

‘I like it here. It reminds me of the last time I saw Poland. Before the Germans came we were workers. Teachers, engineers, policemen even. After the Germans came we were fighters. Then we lost. We became runners. Some of us ran all the way to Hungary, some of us ran all the way to the sea. I stayed with my unit. Thirty of us, retreating north, we tramped five hundred miles on foot, dodging Germans every step of the way. Those who fed and housed us the Germans shot-so we took no food or shelter. We lived off the land. And when the winter froze the soil, we starved. We sank to the bottom of Poland. And most of us died there, and some of us went mad. I saw half a dozen comrades turn mad as hatters. My last sight of my brother Stanislaus was him standing in a Polish forest ranting at the trees like that witless idiot over there. We became raggedymen, all of us raggedymen. We looked, we sounded, we smelt no different from this lot. We were the dregs of Poland, the last scum of a scorched earth. “And I alone am escaped to tell thee.” To tell thee, Stilton, to tell the Squadron Leader. You took me in. England took me in. And I sank to the bottom of England. And so you find me here, as deep as I can go. And now it is England’s turn. Soon England will fall before the Panzers. Tell me, Stilton, how deep can you go? Try it-learn. I am here to replenish my sense of reality. I have lived too easy this last year or more. I have a pillow for my head and coins to jingle in my pocket-but I can go deep, straight to the bottom. One day soon we will all know this madness. How deep can you go, Walter?’

Outside Cal said, ‘What was that about?’

‘My fault, lad. I shouldn’t have asked. Not as if I haven’t heard it before. It’s pretty much what he said day after day when we had him out at Burnham-on-Crouch last year. It’s… it’s Wally’s vision, I suppose. He’s cast himself as the wandering Jew. At least the Catholic version of it.’

‘Or Ishmael. “And I alone am escaped to tell thee.” That’s Moby Dick. I know, I skipped to the last page when I realised I was never going to get through it all.’

‘Oh,’ said Stilton, a bit dismissively. ‘I’d just assumed he was quoting the Bible. No point in skipping to the end o’ that, is there? We all know how it ends.’