A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER Read online

  Mr Rosen had once told him the menorah came from his home in Germany. His father had hidden it before the SS came to take them away to Auschwitz, or was it Dachau? To his shame, Mark couldn’t remember. Mr Rosen had been back home once, to retrieve it. It had still been there, where it was hidden. Somehow, Mr Rosen had said, he had known it would be.

  They talked for a little while, but there was nothing much to say. Mark and Susan were leaving, tonight, they hoped; Mr Rosen was staying and waiting to die.

  ‘I just wish I could take a few of the bastards with me when I go,’ he said with sudden fire. They were dying down in him to embers, all his flames, but now and again they would flare up, and Mark would wish he’d known the old man in his youth.

  ‘Ah, well.’ He sighed. ‘I wish that I believed, Mark. That I would see Rosa and the boy again. Samuel, he was called. My family. They never came out. I did. They didn’t. Not even a grave. Only ashes, mixed with those of a million others. . . .’ He blinked rapidly, clearing his eyes. ‘Rosa Rosen. Hell of a name, eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mark softly. What else could he say? Once you had anger, fire. And now? Only regret. And the sorrow of lessons never learned.

  ‘No, Mark, it’s the right thing that you are doing. Get out now. Raise your family somewhere better than this. But one day, when things have changed—as you must believe they will—come back home. I should have gone back to Germany, claimed my homeland back off them, but . . . there were too many memories, you know? But not for you, perhaps. If you get out now.’

  The clock ticked on. Mark glanced at it. ‘Mr Rosen, I’m going to have to go.’

  The old man nodded gravely, and shook his hand. ‘Shalom.’

  Mark nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Sometimes parting was a sorrow without any sweetness to it. He closed the door on his way out.

  Half the lights on the Blackheath were out, smashed. Darkness made their work easier.

  The coppers patrolled the estate very lightly, mostly confining their presence to its outskirts. The job was to make sure that all the scum stayed there, where they belonged. Who cared whether or not they ripped each other’s throats out? Not the law.

  The danger was the Jackshirts, the young bloods with their shaved heads and red, white, and blue T-shirts in all weathers, even the bitter heart of late November, like now. Looking for a chance to impress, to prove themselves—it stood you in good stead, these days, if you went for a job with the police, or the elite special patrols. The Jackshirts roamed the estate by dark, looking for someone, anyone. Everybody here was a legitimate target.

  He wore his hair long. That was to mark him out as one of the oppressed. Some of the Asian lads on the estate banded together in vigilante groups. If you were one of the white people here, by the time you convinced them you weren’t the enemy, you could be dead, or maimed at the very least.

  He still had an old flyer—or had until this morning—handed out by one of the far-right groups they’d had around in the old days, when there were still elections, before the stupid sods had elected the BPA. British Patriotic Alliance. Bastards. He’d found the flyer sorting through some old things, sorting out the stuff to pack into his case. One case each, Spider had said. No more. Christ knew how it had got there

  Our aims, the leaflet had declared. He only remembered one of them, right now.

  To execute all white race mixers.

  Mark walked on down the street. The only sound was the squelch of his leaky trainers on the tarmac. He couldn’t afford another pair. What are they so afraid of?

  He sighed. He could chase his tail all night trying to work that one out.

  Spider had been some sort of socialist or anarchist before the BPA came in. He was thin and pale with ginger hair down to his shoulders in dreadlocks. He’d been in a council flat. Easy meat. They’d just relocated him. He’d been lucky to escape arrest. The ‘subversives’ had been the first ones to be rounded up. Most likely to organise something.

  But here, he had connections. On the estate, as everywhere else, there was a black market. People who could see a profit to be made and would risk the grief that running the checkpoints could bring, in exchange for it. Cigarettes, coffee, dope, little luxuries like that. That was how Mark had raised this money, buying their dope and then selling it on. And always the risk of treading on some other, bigger dealer’s toes.

  They ran stuff into the Blackheath, and all the other places like it, all the dumping grounds, all the ghettos while the unwanted and the impure waited for their turn on the chopping block. And sometimes, if you had enough money, they could run people out again.

  Mark gave Spider the money. Spider counted it, then went to the phone and made a call.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. He scribbled a note on a piece of paper and passed it to Mark. ‘Be there in one hour. Dead on the dot. If you’re late, it’s blown.’

  Mark read, memorised, and shredded it, then nodded. ‘OK. Thanks, mate.’

  Spider shook his hand. ‘Just wish I could do more around here.’

  Spider would never leave, Mark knew. Because in a perverse way he was in his element. Before the BPA came, he would never have hoped to make so concrete a difference. He would stay here until they came to take him away in one of those unmarked vans, the ones you never came out of alive.

  Face flushed with relief, heart banging like a victory drum, he stepped out onto the pavement and started walking. Rounding the corner, he could see the apartment block. His home no more, after tonight. Who was he kidding? It had never been.

  A foot scraped on the pavement behind him. Mark walked on. A little faster than before.

  More footsteps. Clump, clump, clump. More than one set.

  Oh, God . . . he didn’t believe, but he started to pray.

  Clump, clump, clump. Faster, and faster. The sounds changed. They weren’t just directly behind him now. They were spreading out.

  Walk. Walk. Don’t run. Don’t look back.

  ‘Oi!’

  Walk don’t run, don’t look back, don’t answer. It wasn’t far now. Only a couple of hundred yards, surely? Not that far.

  Far enough, he knew. Far enough to die before you were home.

  ‘Oi! Longhair!’

  ‘Girlboy!’

  ‘We’re talking to you! Yeah, you!’

  And then he did it. Big mistake, but he knew they’d have come for him anyway. But he still shouldn’t have done it; like Lot’s wife at Sodom, he turned and he looked back.

  The Jackshirts started running.

  There were five of them. All young, all fast. Mark wasn’t exactly old bones himself, but he knew he couldn’t outrun them. Still, he tried.

  But they were on him, outpacing him, spreading to outflank him. One, then two swerved onto the pavement in front of him. He slowed, backed up, but the others were behind him and to his left. On his right there was only a high, flat brick wall, too high and too flat to climb.

  They closed in on him. One held a length of chain, another a knife. The others, knuckledusters, a club.

  ‘Well, look who’s out after curfew,’ one of them said, one of the boys with the knuckledusters. His shaven head gleamed as the moon peeped out from behind a bank of thick cloud. Mark put him at about twenty-two, twenty-three. The eldest, he guessed. The ringleader.

  Oh Christ, why now, tonight of all nights?

  ‘Thought it was a bird at first,’ said the one with the chains. Mark looked around for a gap in the ranks, one he could dart through, and run for the apartment, have a chance of making out. God knew how they’d get out again, but——

  The leader punched him in the solar plexus, with the knuckle duster. Mark doubled up, the air whooshing out of his lungs. The pain. The pain was terrible. Just that blow could have killed him.

  The chains crashed down, across his back. He hit the pavement. A kick caught him in the side.

  With a strange sense of detachment, he thought: They’re going to beat me to death.

  But no, th
ey’d stopped. For now. Please God, let them have stopped for good. He couldn’t take much more and they’d barely started. One of them was going through his pockets. They had his wallet. Was that all they wanted? If he just lay still they might leave him alone. They were welcome to it anyway. There was no money left, Spider had it all. There was nothing in his wallet except——

  ‘Ooh, look at this, lads.’

  Oh no. Oh please. Oh no.

  The photo. The photo of him and Susan. Oh, no. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

  ‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a race mixer.’

  The leader pulled Mark’s head up by the hair, hawked and spat glutinously in his face. It rolled down his cheek. He wanted to wipe it away but didn’t dare. ‘Knock me sick, your sort. How can you do it? God knows what you catch. So come on then, where d’you live? Think me an’ the lads’d like to come and see your bit of black. Pay our respects, like.’

  They did this sometimes. Came into the flats, broke down the doors, and had their fun. And the neighbours would hear the screaming, but who’d intervene?

  ‘Fuck . . . off,’ Mark croaked.

  They yanked him up and the leader kicked him in the groin. Christ! He doubled over. Didn’t they wear steel-capped boots? Oh God, the pain, the pain. . . .

  ‘Come on, wog-lover. Tell us where she is.’

  I won’t. Won’t. Won’t.

  Wouldn’t he? Just say no. Like those stupid drugs adverts when you were little, remember them? Just say no. All you have to do is keep saying it.

  But they’d barely started hurting him, and how long could anyone hold out? For all the heroes who keep their jaws shut and save their last breath to spit in the torturer’s face, there are a dozen or more who crack and spill their guts and welcome the bullet when it comes and finishes them off, ends the torment of knowing that last capitulation, the enemy’s final victory.

  They caught him by the hair and pulled him up again.

  Glass crunched underfoot.

  ‘What?’

  They were turning. A tall man was crossing the street towards them, from the mouth of a dark alley. He wore a dark suit, shirt and waistcoat—waistcoat? Who wore them anymore?—a long, light-coloured coat. Bareheaded. Dark hair. A pale angular face. Something familiar about the face. Something. What?

  The chief Jackshirt let Mark go, stepped forward. ‘What you looking at?’

  The man just looked at him.

  ‘You want some too, that it?’ The Jackshirt leaned forward and poked the tall man in the chest. ‘Listen——’

  The tall man reached up, grabbed the two poking fingers, and bent them back. A sound like dry twigs breaking on a clear winter morning. The Jackshirt screamed. The tall man let go of his hand and hit him in the neck. There was another, louder crack, and the Jackshirt was flung aside like a used rag. The tall man came forward.

  The one with the knife lunged at him. Did he get him? Mark couldn’t tell; the tall man grabbed the shaven head with both hands and twisted. Crack.

  The tall man sprang forward. The other three Jackshirts might have run, but he didn’t give them time. The club and the chains swung; the knuckleduster punched out and all met empty air. The tall man punched the man with the knuckleduster and the one with the chains, ferocious lunging blows like a woodsman chopping trees. Two more loud cracks of breaking bone; two more Jackshirts fell and were still.

  One left, the one with the chains. He swung wildly at the tall man once more, then turned to run. But the tall man caught him. Picked him up as if he weighed nothing, and then flung him at the brick wall. The crunch of impact was loud and unpleasant, and very final.

  The tall man was on the pavement now, offering a hand. ‘Can you stand up?’

  Mark was doubled over in agony, but he could, just about. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I think so. You——?’

  But the tall man swayed now, and put out a hand to steady himself against the wall. There was a glistening darkness on his waistcoat. The knife, thought Mark. ‘Ah . . .’ the tall man sighed. He didn’t seem frightened, or even surprised. He looked up at Mark and smiled.

  ‘Malachi.’

  The tall man looked around. Mark followed his gaze. A woman was standing in the mouth of the alley from which he’d emerged. She was holding a child in the crook of one arm; with the other, she reached out towards him.

  ‘Malachi, come home now.’

  The tall man—Malachi—stepped away from Mark and started across the road. He stumbled as he went, swayed, but kept going. Halfway across, he turned and looked back. ‘You’d better get back home now, Mark,’ he said. ‘Susan will be worrying. Get yourselves out. The three of you.’ He smiled tightly. Then he turned to stumble the rest of the way across, onto the pavement, before his legs gave way and buckled underneath him. He collapsed at the mouth of the alley. He managed to half rise. The woman reached down towards him. He clutched at her hand, and she pulled him up.

  And then they were gone, as if the shadows filling the alley had welled up and overflowed to engulf them.

  Mark sagged for a moment against the alley wall. It didn’t seem real. None of it did. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Whatever the origins of the tall man, the five bodies strewn around him weren’t in his imagination.

  He turned and started staggering back towards his flat.

  ‘Mark! Shit! What . . .?’

  ‘Jackshirts. Susan, it’s all right. I’ll explain later. But we haven’t time now. Come on.’

  They staggered down the stairs with the cases. On the floor below, Mark stopped.

  ‘Mark?’

  ‘Wait a second.’

  ‘I thought you said we didn’t have time?’

  ‘I’ll be a minute.’

  ‘You said that last time.’ It wasn’t much of a joke, but it was all they had.

  The door of Mr Rosen’s flat was ajar. Mark pushed it open and went inside.

  Mr Rosen sat in his armchair, eyes closed, mouth open as if in mid-snore. But he wasn’t snoring.

  Mark knelt, wearily, his bruises throbbing.

  ‘Mark.’ Susan whispering from the doorway.

  A dark stain had dried from red to brown on the old man’s shirt.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Oh God. Mark . . .’

  There was something in Rosen’s cooling hands.

  Mark stared at it for a long time, then prised it loose. ‘Hang on.’ He stood, still holding it. A black-and-white photograph of a family of three. A man, woman, and child.

  ‘Poor old guy,’ he heard Susan whisper. ‘We never even knew his first name.’

  The man in the picture was tall with black hair, clad in a suit, waistcoat, and a long, light-coloured coat. ‘Didn’t we?’

  ‘Mark, I’m sorry about him. But we can’t do anything. We have to go.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He slipped the photograph into his own pocket. A reminder. But she was right. There was no more time.

  Get out now. Raise your family somewhere better than this. But one day, when things have changed— as you must believe they will—come back home.

  ‘Shalom,’ he said softly.

  He closed the door behind him.

  Close the Door, Put Out the Light

  IT WAS AN OLD PHOTOGRAPH, grainy black and white, but I got the sense of it easily enough. It showed a family of five people standing in a back garden, the line’s silhouette broken twice by the pale, narrow spires of silver birch saplings. The dress was late 1940s. The father was middle-aged and reasonably well built, with a dark handlebar moustache and an almost entirely full head of hair that, as far as I could tell from the poor quality of the shot, remained untouched by any hint of grey.

  ‘Her dad, that was,’ said Rachel unnecessarily. He could hardly have been anyone else.

  Standing primly beside him was a woman who was presumably his wife, somewhat younger—mid-to-late thirties, I judged—and who held his hand in a way that suggested to me it was strictly for
the purposes of the picture, and that she would release it—or, if he didn’t disengage quickly enough, tear it free—immediately afterwards.

  On either side, the children; the eldest girl beside the mother, the younger daughter and the boy, a five-year-old dressed in a sailor-suit—had people still bothered with such things?—beside the father. Rachel leaned over my shoulder and touched the face of the younger girl.

  ‘And there’s Aunt Mildred,’ she said.

  In the kitchen, there was a popping click as the electric kettle boiled and she went to pour the coffee. I studied her; how old would Rachel have been that night? A baby? She was about fifty now. In some ways she didn’t look it, bearing herself upright, her face strong-boned, unwrinkled, but with trenches graven deeply into it by the care of time. But her chestnut hair was streaked with white—not grey, literally white, as though a mischievous child had smeared lengths of it with a small brush dipped in white paint while she slept—and in rare moments, when she didn’t think anyone was looking and it had all got too much to her, she let herself sag, and her body bent itself into the outline of an old crone.

  I looked down at the photograph again, and my eyes strayed from the picture of Aunt Mildred to the elder girl. She would have been in her twenties, presumably married.

  ‘Is this your mum?’ I asked.

  Rachel came back in from the kitchen and set down a mug of coffee beside me at my elbow. ‘Yes, that’s right. She was lovely, wasn’t she?’

  Pretty plain actually, I thought, but I didn’t say anything, just nodded.

  Rachel pulled on her coat and hat. ‘I’m very grateful to you, Iain,’ she said. ‘God knows I dread Hallowe’en normally. I’ve been invited to this party or that knees-up more times than I can remember, but there’s always Mildred to consider.’