The door opened before Cook reached for the handle. A woman pushed her way through the heavy blackout curtains and threw a bucket of grey water into the alley, only acknowledging Cook once she’d done so.
She had a look of Frankie. Undoubtedly his mother. She looked like she’d lived a hard life. Her arms and cheeks were red, contrasting with her black and grey clothes. From the way she’d manhandled the heavy bucket, Cook got an impression of strength – she looked like someone who meant business, not someone you’d want to get on the wrong side of.
‘We’re open at six,’ she said. ‘Don’t want any trouble.’
Cook looked back at Frankie, but the boy had disappeared. He realised she’d mistaken him for someone in authority. He held out his hand.
‘John Cook,’ he said. ‘From Sussex. Frankie’s staying with us.’
The woman straightened up, taking a proper look at Cook.
‘What’re you doing here?’ she asked.
‘We’re here for the party,’ Cook said.
‘Party?’ she replied.
Cook held up the present as evidence.
‘You wanted him home for the day,’ he said.
The woman shook her head, looking at Cook as if he were speaking a foreign language.
‘Frankie,’ Cook shouted. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do.’
But when Cook looked back at the woman, she was smiling.
‘Should have seen your face!’ she said.
7
The pub was long and narrow. A small window next to the front door, looking out onto the alley, and another small window at the far end, clouded with condensation and darkened by the obligatory precautions – the ubiquitous blackout curtains covering a window that Cook knew would have been liberally applied with sticking tape to guard against blast damage. The first section after the front door was full width, like the parlour in a house. Small oak tables crammed in close, a fireplace, an ugly clock on the mantel. As they pushed their way through the crowd, the space narrowed, a bar running the rest of the length on the left side, a narrow staircase with a chain across it on the right. The low ceiling was bare wooden boards, blackened by centuries of tobacco smoke, held up by thick oak beams. In Cook’s local, every beam was decorated with polished horse brasses. Here were row on row of curved hooks with wooden handles.
Frankie’s mum (call me Gracie, she’d told Cook on the way in) slipped behind the bar, earning a grateful smile from the young barmaid – a pretty girl with a pale face, her hair up in a silk turban, busy serving from a shelf of bottles better stocked than Cook had seen in a long time. Gracie pulled a pint and set it on the bar in front of Cook. He took it gratefully, sipped it. That first taste.
‘IPA,’ Gracie said. ‘Made to last the journey out to India.’
Cook nodded. He’d drunk more than his fair share out in India. A longer story for another time. Cook hadn’t been ready to come home after the armistice. Couldn’t imagine slotting back into real life. He’d re-enlisted to serve King and Country and had ended up serving the ghosts of the East India Company, protecting the furthest outreaches of the empire.
‘You can put your money away and all,’ Gracie said, as Cook felt in his pocket for half a crown. ‘Least I can do, after all you’ve been doing, looking after our Frankie.’
Cook put his money in the collection box for the Spitfire fund.
The barmaid brushed past Gracie on her way to serve another customer. She muttered something in Gracie’s ear, and Gracie’s face coloured an even deeper red. They both laughed, looking at Cook.
‘You’re not what Dottie was expecting,’ Gracie explained.
‘I bet you went into the countryside when you were a girl,’ Cook said, to the barmaid. ‘Took a picnic. Hopped over a gate to sit in a field. Got chased off by an angry farmer. It’s most people’s first and only encounter with one of us, so they think we’re all like that all the time.’
‘And you’re not,’ Dottie asked, with a smile.
‘Not all the time, although I do have a particular enthusiasm for chasing day-trippers off my land.’
‘I know the feeling,’ Gracie said. ‘Barring people from my pub’s one of the highlights of my day. Of course, I have to let them back in the next night otherwise I’d be out of customers in a week.’
‘You should come down and visit,’ Cook said. ‘Frankie can show you around.’
‘I’d like that,’ Gracie said. Cook had the feeling he was being flirted with. Not such a bad thing, ordinarily, but it felt like there might be some kind of taboo – the woman beingthe mother of his evacuee. Some kind of family relationship, not by blood but there nonetheless.
