After the Cabaret by Hilary Bailey Page A

layers had been tumbled into each other. And he worried, too, that Bruno might have an agenda he didn’t understand. But, all in all, he thought, if Bruno wanted him to listen to his tale sitting in a puddle in the middle of a field he would do it without complaint. Hell – he’d do it naked in Trafalgar Square, if that was what Bruno wanted.
    However, at least he now had a hope of being able to meet Bruno somewhere out of the cold and damp of wintry London: Katherine had phoned to say a cousin of hers was going off on an archaeological dig for a few months. Hisflat in Bloomsbury would be empty and she was trying to persuade him to rent it to Greg. If that worked out, thought Greg, it would give him a base where he and Bruno could meet, away from the public places which for some reason the old man preferred.
    Now he sat back in the steamy atmosphere to listen.
    â€˜Sally,’ Bruno said, ‘was not very forthcoming about what had gone wrong at Hodd. She said, “It was ghastly – so cold – and an absolute nest of traitors. They were all Nazis. Lady Hodd said it would be a good idea to put the Duke of Windsor on the throne when Hitler won the war. While I was there she put a Christmas card from Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor now, on the mantelpiece. It was the last straw.”
    â€˜Everyone laughed – and the engagement came to a natural end when Ralph was shot down in France. He survived – that time – and was taken prisoner. Sally spent Christmas with her parents in Worcestershire and Ralph Hodd was in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. In those days things happened quickly. He wrote releasing her from the engagement and she went on sending pots of jam and woolly jumpers until he escaped. As he did because, of course, he was a hero, poor man.’ Bruno looked round. His eye lit on a young man sitting by the window, reading. ‘So young,’ he said, ‘and so many of the clichés are true. Those pilots saved the country and many, many died.’ He looked at Greg. ‘Ralph died too, later. So did the others, the Hermann Schmidts and the Carl Brauns. But that’s war,’ said Bruno. ‘There was a terrible raid at the end of December. And Theo Fitzpatrick turned up.’

Chapter 21
    â€˜You’d have done a lot better to have stayed up north, Sally,’ said Vi, as she swept broken glass and plaster through her back door into her small garden. The wall at the end had been hit and where it had stood was a vast heap of crumbly bricks and splintered wood. Beyond that were the two walls left standing after the house opposite Vi’s had been struck in a previous raid.
    â€˜Can you lift while I fix this?’ asked Sally. She was trying to put the back door, which had been blown into the garden, on its hinges.
    â€˜Christ! My nails!’ exclaimed Vi. ‘This is men’s work. Let’s leave it for Ted.’
    â€˜You said yourself he was working round the clock. If we wait for him you’ll freeze.’
    They wrestled with the door for another five minutes, and got it roughly into place.
    â€˜That’ll have to do,’ said Vi. ‘I can wedge a chair against it to keep it closed. The warden says not to try to use thegas. I’ll light the fire and boil up the kettle on it. I’ve got plenty of wood from up the street – the poor buggers it belonged to won’t need it any more.’
    The narrow street where Vi lived was a shocking sight. On either side of her home two big craters represented two houses. Rubble was piled along the pavements. Workmen were repairing a broken water main. A smell of burning still hung in the air.
    As soon as they had closed the back door there was a knock at the front. A woman in an old coat, her face drawn, was standing there. She said, ‘Potter sent me round from the Rose and Crown. Your Jack’s at King’s Cross – he phoned the pub. He wants you to go and