Chapter 11: 77 Denmark Hill

WE SAID our farewells to Petersen and headed down to catch the bus back up to Chiswick, where we would use the Underground from there.

“Are you alright, Edgar?” Mary was concerned. I suppose I had gone rather quiet while Petersen discussed the different operations carried out on his leg, before the doctors finally decided to take it off.

“Yes. I hadn’t had the same problems as Petersen, Mary. You know, the series of operations, the hopes first raised and then dashed each time. I was dragged back to the field station almost completely out of it. They simply cut off the foot without a by-your-leave, and that was that. I hadn’t had any reason to remember it for a long time, but now the memories are fresh again.”

“And I suppose you were a similar age to Gunter?” Mary asked, as she tucked her right arm into the cruck of my left, as I subconsciously leaned more heavily on the walking stick in my right hand, feeling a little weary at heart.

“A little younger, I suppose. I would think Petersen is in his early twenties, while I was not yet eighteen.”

“I suppose at that point you must’ve thought your world was at an end?”

“Yes, I did, or at least I did at first. But then I realised that nothing much had really changed. I had already lost Mildred almost two years earlier, the moment that I was shipped off to join the fight against the Germans and Tom was sent back home with his tail between his legs. I had sensed it at the time of my first leave. He was the one who needed the sympathy during those first few weeks, losing his pride by rejection and losing his best friend as well, while both of them believed I was heading for glory as a war hero.”

“Some glory, I bet the war was more horrific than heroic, Edgar.”

“It was, but you do get used to the horror. So I think Mildred did her best to boost him up so he could find himself again, and in the process she lost herself in him.”

“He must have been like a bird with a broken wing to her,” Mary mused.

I wondered at that too, with this beautiful woman clinging to my arm. Was I a broken-winged bird to her?

“Remember, Mary, that Mildred already loved us both almost equally. We’d all been close ever since we learned how to walk and talk. I loved them both, also almost equally, and I know Tom loved me almost as much as he loved her. Mildred fell in love with him while she fell out of love with me, and I could do nothing at all about it other than read the signs in her letters from home, and wait for the axe to fall and cleave my heart in two.”

“Loving relationships between men and women, can make other friendships difficult,” Mary said thoughtfully.

“Sometimes,” I said, pointedly, “the best of men can be both husbands and best friends.”

“I know, Edgar, but I hope I haven’t lost him yet as either. I really don’t think so, and haven’t thought so at any time, but I do feel sorry that you had lost yours.”

“For a while I only thought I had, clinging onto hope that I was wrong. I didn’t know for sure until they entered my room at the hospital holding hands and separated at the very last moment, thinking that it was before I saw them. Plus they hoped I wouldn’t notice her little bump, but they were not to know that I dreamed of her every night and knew her every contour. Well, I had had my hopes, too. He may have won Mildred, but he really lost us both in the long run. So I set out my stall to break off old ties and make a career for myself alone and felt I made the best of it.”

“I think you did. I feel sorry for Mildred, she lost her husband, two of her children, and most of all she lost the love of her life, she lost you.”

“I’m not so sure that she has lost that much love. At least she has the love of her surviving daughter, who must be of marriageable age now, and she has the comfort of caring for her mother. I am sure she is not lonely or without lots of love in her life.”

“Maybe that’s more than she deserves but I believe it is much less than she must have dreamed of.”

“True.”

I was starting to get out of my reverie. It really shouldn’t affect me that much, but being close to feeling some satisfaction of my lot.

“I remember that when we were children, and we discussed what we wanted to do with our lives, Mildred was a great follower of the suffragette movement. She wanted to be a nurse, work up to being a sister, than become the matron, all while bringing up a family. She made the conscious decision to accompany Tom on the bus to learn how to type. Now she is only nursing her aged and sick mother. She may well be dissatisfied with the way her life has turned out, but they were a result of her choices.”

“What did you want to be when you grew up, Edgar?”

I smiled. I think my sore foot lost all its tiredness at that moment. Here I was, walking along a leafy suburban avenue towards the railway station, with a beautiful girl on one arm and the bright sun shone down on us from a cold but cloudless February sky with even some warmth in it, and I felt all right with the world.

“A policeman,” I replied, my chest pumped out proud as a pigeon, “a policeman just like my father. I wanted to make people’s lives better by putting away those that want to ruin lives, deterring others from following the same criminal path because they know there’s a fair chance of getting caught, and making people feel better by taking away some of that fear of crime.”

“And you did.”

“I did. All right, my job has changed somewhat over the last few years and I do a lot more mundane marital cases, Mary, but I do still get asked to find people, or protect people’s livelihoods by discovering who’s taking the money from the till. So, yes, I have fulfilled what I set out to do. I may not have much love in my life, but I have pride and draw some satisfaction from that. Hey, why don’t we take a look at Denmark Hill?”

“Why not?” she smiled and squeezed my arm.

“Yes, I felt all right with the world again and I looked to follow the only lead we had, so, from Mortlake station, we changed trains at Battersea and headed for Denmark Hill Station.

We walked up Denmark Hill with the sun behind us, staying on the warmer sunny side of the road. It was a broad avenue with trees lining the east side of the street, behind which were large three-storied town houses. This was suburban London, from where buses or the Underground would take men into the city to work. Most of the houses on this side seemed to be Regency, while the shops on the west side were late Victorian, I guessed. Then we passed Love Lane on the right and came up to a smart terrace of shops that probably dated from just before or just after the first world war. Number 77 Denmark Hill was one of these shops, a barber shop actually, with a two-storied flat above. Immediately opposite was a pub, the “Rose & Crown”. Most of the shops looked as though they were shut for an hour or two for lunch.

The traffic was light, just a bus trundling towards us from some distance away, so we crossed the road at Love Lane to look at the exterior of the flat from a different aspect, standing just in front of the pub.

“Ooh, Ed,” Mary said in her Home Counties voice, “are we casing the joint?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘case the joint’ before?”

“No, I thought you were referring to the pub, that you were hungry, as in a sandwich made with a cut from a joint of meat.”

“No, although come to think of it, it’s lunchtime and we could have a sandwich and case the joint at the same time.”

I must’ve looked blankly at her.

“Look, in gangster movies they say this all the time, oh, I forgot, you don’t watch the movies. You should, you know, they can be very educational.” She squeezed my arm, continuing talking but reverting to her normal American accent. “Hey, I could eat a horse, Ed, all this sleuthing makes a poor gal who ain’t used to it hungry, so treat me to a sandwich, will ya, Hon?”

“You really want to eat in a pub?”