Out of the Blackout by Robert Barnard Read Free Book Online

couldn’t be more help,’ said the woman, with that uninvolved friendliness the English rather go in for.
    Why didn’t I ask to see the house? Simon asked himself as he walked down the road in the direction she had pointed out. Too embarrassed. And it wouldn’t have told me anything. Everything would have changed inside. They’d have taken their furniture— them, my family. Unless—you never knew—the wallpaper in one of the rooms had been the same . . . But how would I have explained why I wanted to see it?
    Certainly the Fox and Newt aroused no memories, but then: how could it? It was a steamy, varnish-and-brass suburban London pub, but he could never have seen the inside of it. It was still early in the evening, and possible to have the landlord to himself for five minutes’ conversation.
    â€˜Oh aye, I’ve been here a while,’ said Arnold Stebbings, polishing glasses, ‘but not that long. Only since ’forty-nine. Not before the war. I was in the war, my lad, and I only came to London on my demob.’
    â€˜Hell!’ said Simon, drinking into his pint disappointedly.
    â€˜What was it you wanted?’
    â€˜You see, I lost both my parents in the war.’ (Suddenly there came, unbidden, to Simon’s mind that line from The Importance of Being Ernest: ‘It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me . . .’). ‘I was . . . adopted. And I wondered if there was anybody still living around here who . . . would remember me. And them.’
    It would do, as a story. It was getting better. The landlord, anyway, was displaying that non-committal but friendly interest.
    â€˜Let’s see now. There’s been a deal of changes, I can tell you. Well—Paddington’s not really a place where people settle down, is it? There’s still some of the old ‘uns around, though.Jessie Pyke, but she’s senile, more or less, so I wouldn’t . . . Jack Watkyns! That’s the chap for you!’
    â€˜Where does he live?’
    â€˜He’s a regular here. What’s today? Wednesday. He wouldn’t thank you for disturbing him during Coronation Street, but he’ll be in here directly afterwards. Have you got the price of a pint for him?’
    â€˜Yes, of course.’
    â€˜Well, you settle Jack down at a table with a pint he hasn’t had to pay for, and he’ll tell you all he knows. And he’s a straight bloke: he won’t make up what he doesn’t remember.’
    So when the torrid doings of the young Elsie Tanner were over for the night, Simon was introduced to old Jack Watkyns. He bought him a pint, took him over to a table, and let him tell all he knew. He was a fat, none-too-clean old man, probably around his mid-sixties, and he’d lived just round the corner from Farrow Street all his life. What he didn’t know about the inhabitants he had been prevented from knowing by the inbuilt privacy-mania of Londoners, not from any lack of will to find out.
    â€˜You say you used to live here? As a boy, was it? Now, which number in Farrow Street would that be?’
    â€˜Number seventeen. It’s got a green front door now, but it was brown then, and there’s yellow roses in the garden.’
    â€˜Got it. Three up from the shop. You’re right, that front door did used to be brown. So this was wartime, was it?’
    â€˜Yes. The beginning of the war.’
    â€˜So that would be when the Simmeters were there, then—they’d be your people, would they? I remember there were children.’
    The surname aroused the faintest of echoes in Simon’s mind.
    â€˜Do you remember much about them?’
    â€˜But you won’t need to ask me, young man, if they’re your folks.’
    â€˜We got separated . . . I think they were killed.’
    â€˜Ah!’ said Jack Watkyns, pulling deeply on his