To Die but Once (Maisie Dobbs #14)(2)
It was as if someone had reached out and snuffed out a candle. Just like that, finger and thumb around the flame as he made one last attempt to form the words that would not come. Darkness enveloped him, pressed against his chest, filled his mouth, suffocated him, and the future his dad had told him to step out toward ceased to exist.
Chapter 1
London, May 20th, 1940
Maisie Dobbs pulled off Tottenham Court Road, maneuvering her Alvis drophead coupe motor car into Warren Street. She waved to Jack Barker, who she knew should have retired by now—he had been selling newspapers on his patch outside the Tube station for years, and in that time she had seen him become more and more stooped, taking precious seconds to fold the newspapers ready to hand to busy office workers and shop assistants as they rushed to and from work. There was a time when his grandson had helped out before and after school, but now young Peter was not so young anymore, and was in the army.
Maisie wound down the window and slowed the motor car. She held out a coin for the man to take. “No need for change, Mr. Barker,” said Maisie as she placed the newspaper on the passenger seat. “I bet you miss your helper.”
“I do at that, Miss Dobbs. I had another one of ’em lined up to give me a hand, only he was evacuated to Wales. But I reckon he’ll be home soon. His mum keeps saying that what with this Bore War, there’s nothing happening. But I’ve told her—there’s war happening all right—it’s just not reached us. I reckon your Mr. Beale must be worried sick—knowing what he went through in the last war, and now his eldest is over there with the expeditionary force. He must be losing sleep over it. According to the Express, the Germans have marched right across the Ardennes, through Holland and now they’re into France—too blimmin’ close to us, for my liking.”
Maisie nodded. Her assistant, Billy Beale, was indeed losing sleep worrying about his son, who was serving with the army in France, but he was also concerned for his wife, Doreen. Years before they had already lost a little girl, Lizzie, who had died after contracting diphtheria—Doreen had suffered a breakdown following the tragedy. Billy had therefore decided it was best for her to take their youngest child, Margaret Rose, to stay with an aunt in Hampshire, leaving him at home with his second son, Bobby, an apprentice mechanic.
“Did you see they’ve put more sandbags around the station?” said Barker. “Before long there won’t be room for me out here on the pavement.”
“Oh, they’ll make room for you, Mr. Barker—what would we all do without you!” replied Maisie, turning her head to check for traffic as she moved away from the curb.
Barker laughed and waved, but Maisie’s smile faded as she rolled up the window. While the newspapers kept up a stream of positive rhetoric, she had heard from Douglas Partridge, who now worked for the wartime Ministry of Information, that the expeditionary force in France was considered to be in a precarious position.
She drove along the street, passing the Prince of Wales pub, where the landlord, Phil Coombes, had just emerged and was ambling along to a caff just a short way down Tottenham Court Road. Maisie thought she could set a clock by Phil Coombes, for he left the premises at the same time each morning to walk to a nearby caff, where he would order a bacon sandwich and a cup of tea. It was his one break in the day, otherwise he never left the pub because he was either behind the bar or, when the doors were locked for the night, in the flat above. Coombes and his wife had raised two sons and a daughter in the flat, but now only Vivian, the middle child, remained at home.
Even before Maisie raised her hand to wave, and to receive from the landlord a desultory lifting of the hand in response, Maisie knew that all was not well. The way Coombes carried himself—with shoulders drooping and his head forward, as if trying to set a pace for his lagging feet—indicated a troubled man. As she turned left onto Fitzroy Street to park the Alvis, Maisie wondered if she should approach Coombes, ask him what was wrong and perhaps offer help of some sort. But had she not learned her lesson time and again, that not everyone in straitened circumstances wants to be helped? Yet when she looked back at Phil Coombes, she felt an ache of concern in her chest, as if the man’s emotions had traced a direct line to her heart.
She was just about to set off in the direction of the caff on Tottenham Court Road, hoping to catch up with Coombes, when Billy Beale walked around the corner, his gas mask in its box hanging over one shoulder by the strap, and bouncing up and down on his hip.
“Mornin’, miss.” With a deft pinch to the lighted end, he extinguished the cigarette he was smoking, and put the stub in his pocket.
“Did you come up from Hampshire this morning?” asked Maisie.
Billy nodded. “Makes all the difference, not having to come into work until late on a Monday, or even a Tuesday morning. I miss my girls, so it’s been handy, you giving me the extra time so I can get down there once a week. And you should see little Margaret Rose—all apple cheeks and growing like ivy. She’ll be almost as tall as the boys, make no mistake.”
“I thought as much when she was a toddler—she was like a mannequin even then.” They fell into step toward the office on Fitzroy Square. “Have you heard from young Billy?”
Billy shook his head. “Boys of his age are not exactly known for writing, are they? Doreen sends a letter or card once a week—keeping it short because she knows he won’t read anything too long—but even when he was over here in barracks, it was as much as he could do to pick up a pencil and write a quick note home. I know—I was like it myself at that age. It was only when I came back from over there that it occurred to me that it wouldn’t have hurt to write a bit more—but then there’s the censor peering at everything, so half the letter would have been blacked out anyway.”