‘London calling. London calling.’
Paul turned to see Penny, putting on her over-sweet smile, an amused tone to her voice when she spoke. ‘Where on earth where you?’ she asked. ‘I could literally see the moment your mind returned back to the here and now.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, feeling a little sheepish. He looked out of the window, it was still raining. The shop was empty, save for a kid who was perusing the adventure novels. He looked at Penny who, despite the large umbrella, had got a bit of a soaking while at the bank, paying the bills. There were beads of rain on her face.
‘Penny, you need a towel and then a cup of tea,’ he said.
‘I’ll make the tea.’
‘Go and dry off first, or you’ll get a chill. There’s a heater in my rooms, and clean towels; go and dry yourself off. Take as long as you like, I can’t see us getting busy this afternoon.’ He added, ‘And I’ll have a nice cup of tea ready for when you get back down.’
She saluted. Correctly, he noticed: long way up, short way down. ‘Righto, boss,’ she said, disappearing into his office, where the door to the stairs was hidden behind the tall cupboard.
He glanced at the kid, engrossed in a book, wanted to say, this isn’t a lending library, then remembered at that age, he’d loved stories too. He let the kid be, and sat at the front desk, busied himself with the receipts.
Upstairs, Penny entered Paul’s loft apartment carrying the change of clothes she always kept in the office. She locked the door behind her. She found the bathroom and stripped to her underwear, laid her rain-dampened skirt and blouse on a drying rack and the dry skirt and blouse alongside them, then set to work fixing her hair, combed it out and re-set it as best she could with the few pins she had. She took off her make-up and reapplied it. Then she dressed in the dry clothes, tidied away, and went to leave. She was naturally inquisitive, and with a boss as unreadable as Paul, she realised that she had the chance to learn a little more about him. She decided to have a look around.
The apartment was spartan. In the living room was a comfortable-looking couch, a desk and chair, and a radio. No carpet or rug. In the bedroom there was a bed, the sheets and blankets clean and folded tight; she wondered if she could bounce a penny off them, then decided it wasn’t the time to be messing around with his bed. There was also a wardrobe and some sort of reel-to-reel machine stood against the wall. Again no carpet or rug. Two other rooms were absolutely empty. Altogether, his rooms reminded her of an army barracks.
In the hall was a small bookshelf, filled mostly with adventure novels, plus a few histories; boys’ stuff, she thought. On top of the bookshelf was a picture of a family, which, by their clothes, she guessed had been taken before the war: a youngish couple standing either side of a young boy of perhaps six or seven years old; Paul, she realised, with his parents. From the white bungalow and palms in the background of the photograph, she knew it had been taken somewhere out there in the Empire. So there you are, she thought. She picked up her bag, unlocked the door onto the stairs, locked the door behind her and went back down to the bookstore.
‘I’ve left my…’ she went to say. Paul wasn’t there but a cup of tea was waiting for her beneath the counter. She picked it up and took a sip. He really did make a good cup of tea. She looked around and saw Paul over by the front window chatting to the boy who read all the books but didn’t buy any. They were in rapt conversation so she left them to it, did some shelving until the door rang and she went to see to a customer, fresh out of the rain.
‘That boy,’ she said later.
‘Terrence.’
‘Shouldn’t Terrence be at school?’
‘I asked him, and he said they learn nothing at school.’
‘He’s a truant.’
‘I was going to say autodidact.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Still a truant. And besides, he doesn’t buy anything.’
‘I said he was only to browse the second-hand books, and not break the spines.’ He studied her expression. ‘You disapprove.’
‘I don’t want the school board coming here,’ she said. ‘We could get in trouble.’
‘Point taken. But I’m not throwing him out.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps I can get him to do some jobs for us.’
‘Paul, no.’
‘Well he’s gone now. So no harm done.’
She went to the counter, ‘More mail from His Majesty.’ She looked at the address and title a second time. ‘You were a Major?’
‘Purely a flag of convenience.’
‘Can I ask what they want from you? They do keep writing.’
‘They want to play pin the tail on the donkey.’
‘And you aren’t the sort of donkey to want a tail pinned on you?’ She already knew his disdain for the army and the war. In reply, he gently took the letter from her, tore it into four pieces and dropped it into the bin.
‘Or you could just write back,’ she continued, ‘and say, “no thankyou” because, otherwise, you do know, they’ll just keep on writing.’
‘I suppose…’ he said, a slight frown forming between his eyes.
‘Want me to do it?’ she said, a smile in her voice. ‘I’ll write to the War Department and tell them that Major Carter. P. Rtd. does not want any medallions, tails or trinkets, thankyou very much. Or words to that effect.’
‘Would you?’ he asked.
In reply, she carefully plucked the four pieces of the letter from the waste paper bin. ‘You’ll have to sign it,’ she said.
‘Would you mind forging it for me, Penny? I can’t be doing with all that military stuff.’ He watched her raise an eyebrow, knowing it was her signal for disapproving consent. ‘Anyhow, what did you do during the war?’ he asked, thinking of her perfect salute earlier.
She set out the four quarters of the letter on the counter top, then took a roll of sellotape from the drawer. ‘Did I ever tell you I have perfect pitch?’ she asked. ‘And perfect timing.’
‘That’s rather a segue,’ he said.
‘I can listen to a tune, let’s say the Count Basie Orchestra, and I can tell you that Shine On Harvest Moon is in the key of E minor, and that it starts off at eighty-eight beats per minute but rises to ninety-two beats during Freddie Green’s guitar solo, then drops back down to eighty-nine beats during Sidney Bechet’s absolutely wonderful saxophone solo.’
‘Impressive,’ Paul said, watching her deftly stick the letter together so it could be read properly. ‘And how exactly did the war office make use of this singular skill?’
‘I listened to morse code,’ she said. ‘And because my sense of pitch and timing were so good, I quickly learned to identify individual German coders by their rhythm, and their tiny, individual differences in timing and cadence. I learned to identify the morse coders for different divisions and departments. That was my job. I could tell them when Fritz Gothenburg had moved from Frankfurt to Florence, or Corporal Schnitzel had begun sending morse from Ciacampino instead of Charleroi, suggesting…’
‘…that the their divisions had also moved.’
‘Exactly.’
‘It sounds like, while I was loading jerrycans onto trucks, you were making yourself very useful. Maybe they should pin a tail on you instead.’ By the flicker of emotion that crossed her face, he realised he’d made a joke too far. As he’d learned weeks earlier, her brother had died in the war, and she didn’t go for humour on that topic. ‘Sorry Penny,’ he said quickly
‘It’s alright, Paul.’ She smiled, holding his eyes level, so he knew she wasn’t upset. ‘All that horrid business is over.’ She looked around the shop, then out onto the rainswept street. ‘Do you know, despite the rationing and the dreadful shows on the BBC, I’m rather glad to be living in London right now. It feels like, well, home, you know?’
‘I do know.’
‘Apart from the fog, of course,’ she said, ‘and the bloody rain.’
‘It’s in for the day,’ he said.
‘Which reminds me,’ she said, glancing at the clock, almost closing time. ‘I’ll need to collect my damp clothes before I go.’
Just then the bell rang for another customer.
I love these characters...