Lucille and the Healers

CHAPTER I StowawayA few hours ago, the two men loitering at the Royal Victoria Dock had been subject to considerable curiosity. Their drab, near-identical clothing — both of them sporting brown trench coats and matching trilby hats — suggested the possibility that they were plainclothes detectives. On the other hand, the heavy leather satchels they carried, not to mention their twitchy air of nervousness, made the conclusion that they were not-very-confident burglars seem more likely. Some bets had even been taken, but the passage of time, not to mention the almost offensive dullness of the figures, had taken effect, and to most of the dockworkers they had now become as natural and uninteresting a feature of the background as the loading-cranes, the rusty barges, and the murky waters of the Thames. The loiterers themselves, however, were becoming more agitated with each passing second, and less cautious in their whispering. If any passing docker had still been curious enough, he might have heard the following without taking any great effort to eavesdrop: “Damn Yank ship ought to’ve been in ages ago,” declared the younger of the two, glaring almost accusingly at his watch. “It’ll be past sunset by the time it puts in, if it ever does. What the ’ell are we goin’ to do then?” “We do our job, lad,” answered his colleague, with rather forced calm. “This is your first field euthanasia, I suppose?” “Yeah, and I ’adn’t expected I’d be doin’ it in the dead of night. If that blasted boat had come in on time—” “We’d have ’ad an easy time of it, sure. Still, nothin’ like a baptism of fire, eh lad?” he commented, with an unreassuring smirk. “Just think: if you survive tonight—” “It ain’t funny, you old—” “Keep a civil tongue, boy. Dunno what you’re so jumpy for, anyhow. You got your Winchester, ’aven’t you?” “Yeah,” he answered, grasping for the sawed-off shotgun beneath his coat. “But that’s goin’ to be a fat lot of good if we have to deal with it after nightfall, ain’t it?” “Well, we’ve got the rest of the gear,” the senior man reminded him, hefting his satchel. “Ways and means, lad. Ways and means.” “And what if it’s expecting us, and gets the jump on us first?” “Bloody ray of sunshine, you are. The Ligeia ’asn’t reported no trouble, so that means it can’t have been feedin’ off the crew, or they’d have sent out an SOS. Can’t have ’ad more than a nibble, at any rate. So it’s got to be weak by now, right?” “Right, not to mention bleedin’ ravenous. And what if she puts in after midnight? Didn’t the lady who gave us the briefing say they get stronger then, never mind whether or not they’ve been feedin’?” “We got hours till midnight, you stupid son of—” “Oh, you want to bet it can’t take that much longer?” They both looked to the skyline, now gloriously dappled with rosy tints that the failing sunlight had painted across the vast canvas of London’s air pollution. It was a fit subject for Monet, but to these observers it was an evil omen indeed, and even the older man could not suppress a pang of nauseous dread. In all his days as a Healer, and in spite of his show of confidence, he had never before been required to perform field euthanasia upon a fully active carrier, not to mention a carrier that knew full well it was being hunted. Coward though he was, the youngster had a point, and the senior Healer could not help sympathising with his next wish: “With any luck, the bloody ship’s sunk in the Channel.” “God willing. You got any change, lad? I reckon I’ll call Radlett HQ — see if they’ve got any news on it. Meantime, you can chase up the harbourmaster. See what he’s got to say. Be discreet, mind. We’re customs men, remember? Special orders to search her for smuggled goods soon as she comes in. Got your official papers?” “’Course I ’ave,” he answered, passing a few coins to his associate. “It’ll be alright with the harbourmaster, d’you think? No awkward questions?” “Don’t fret. Major Drayton’s put the fix in at the Home Office. Getting aboard her’s goin’ to be the easy part, trust me.” “Or not, as the case may be,” quipped the younger healer, gazing down-river upon a panorama that remained stubbornly free of American merchant vessels. “Yeah. Well... let’s be about it, then,” ordered the senior Healer, who set off in search of a telephone box whilst his assistant made for the warehouses. When they were both out of earshot, a docker who had been unloading a nearby barge turned to his workmate and gave him his short but concise interpretation of the curious scene: “Right. You owe me half a crown, mate.” “Oh, and ’ow d’you work that out, then?” “One of ’em said ‘Home Office’, that’s how. Means they’re coppers, sure enough, so I win the bet, see?” “That so? And why would coppers be passin’ themselves off as customs men, or are you pretendin’ you didn’t hear that bit?” “Well...” he replied, not very confidently. “It might be some hush-hush bit of business. Security, like. Maybe some foreign spy stowed away on the Ligeia, and they’re waitin’ to pick him up before he gets loose in the country.” “Poor lookout for the country if you’re not talkin’ a load of old rubbish, Bill. The Ligeia stopped early, at Tilbury docks. Engine trouble, or so I heard.” “Did it? Oughtn’t we to have told ’em, then?” “Prob’ly,” he answered, without commitment, “but I’ve been hard at it all bloody day and if I don’t get some beer down me throat in the next five minutes I’m liable to bite me own arm and start drinkin’ the blood, like what the Ancient Mariner did.” “You read too much, mate.” “Might do, but at least I don’t read no rubbish about foreign spies ’n’ the like.” “You’re not goin’ to pay up, are you?” asked Bill, slightly forlorn. “Tell you what, Bill — I’ll stand you a round, then we can drink to your foreign spy. If he ain’t just your fantasy then I say good luck to the poor sod. Give me the pick of any country to be an outcast in, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be putting this one anywhere near the top of me list.” * * * * As the evening wore on into night, a crowd of patrons filed out of the Empire Cinema and onto Leicester Square. They had just been watching Hollywood’s Louise Brooks — the current glamorous idol of many thousand starry-eyed teenage girls and at least as many hopelessly infatuated men — being stabbed to death in a squalid attic by Jack the Ripper, in her latest film, Pandora’s Box. In spite of all this glamour and violence, the film had left many of the watchers cold, and very uncertain what to make of it. “It wasn’t bad,” declared one bowler-hatted city gent to his equally respectable-looking companion. “Downright dismal ending, though.” “You thought so?” replied his friend. “Well, I’d have said that Lulu got what was coming to her, all things considered. Pretty little parasite though she was... Can’t really say I felt much pity for such a loose woman. Something wrong, Miss?” he asked, in response to the seething, contemptuous glare that had just been fired in his direction. Its source was a sixteen year-old girl, and all-too-obviously a fashion victim. Her pale skin shone out in contrast to her garish and clumsily-applied make-up. Her dark hair was cut in a voguish style — short, straight and not unlike a German Stahlhelm — but the cut was rather uneven. Her short, low-waisted, emerald-green flapper dress was at least beyond reproach, though it did not exactly coordinate with her battered old brown mackintosh. She had also got rather carried away in dusting down the shine of her cheap rayon stockings, giving the impression that she had been wading through flour. However, her all-too-obvious social inferiority did not discourage her from looking upon the respectable gent with intense disdain; such a look as one might reserve for an ardent supporter of baby-eating as a solution for overpopulation. “I’m fine, thank you,” she replied, focusing as much malice into that little pleasantry as a fascist dictator might have required for an entire speech. Confused as to what exactly his crime had been, the man decided it would be safer to take her at her word, and turned back to his companion. “Anyway, where were we?” “Loose women. Interesting subject,” replied the other man, with a faintly creepy slyness that the girl still did not find as repulsive as his friend’s self-righteousness. “Right. Now, I think you’d hardly call me a prude—” “Safe to say I definitely wouldn’t, Cyril.” “Indeed... but I hardly think you’d compare me with a woman like that Lulu character, just using the men who fall in love with her; going through lovers like a lion through a herd of antelopes, until she finally meets a lover who puts a knife in her. If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is.” Don’t you, indeed? thought the girl, as malevolently as one can, while the two gents drifted off across the Square. Well I’d like to see how you’d have turned out if you’d been born into a filthy attic, with nothing but your looks to survive on. And now you mention it, I don’t recall anyone forcing those horrible men to ruin their lives. Poor Lulu’s was ruined for her. Moments later, after the thrill of fury had passed, she wondered at herself for having taken it so personally. An insult against a Louise Brooks character, however, seemed almost a blasphemy against the screen goddess herself, and since Lucille (as the girl — Lucy Kitson — preferred to be known, having long since decided that her given name had no place in the Jazz Age) had spent the last two years painstakingly copying the style of Louise Brooks as far as her scarce means would allow, a certain sense of personal affront was inescapable. This is not to suggest for a moment that Lucille was shallow, much less stupid. The fact that she was sixteen and still at school, two years beyond the normal leaving age, was proof against that notion, since she was there by her own merits and not by the payment of the tuition fees which her mother certainly could not have afforded. Her father, Captain Thomas Kitson, had fallen foul of artillery fire at the Battle of the Somme, and for as long as she could remember, her surviving parent had encouraged Lucille and her sister to read, write, add, subtract, sew, and sketch as if their lives depended upon it, which was depressingly close to the truth. The state pension for an infantry captain’s widow was nothing great, and although Mrs. Kitson took in lodgers to help make ends meet, and both of her daughters earned a few shillings for assisting Miss Provine after school and helping her to teach some of the younger girls — experience they would need before going to college to train for their own teaching certificates — they were not a well-off family. They were not quite desperate, although in hard times, such as when lodgers were scarce, they had flirted with desperation, and the dream of seeing both of her daughters qualified to earn a respectable, independent living was Mrs Kitson’s greatest comfort. That dream was now becoming a reality: Eleanor, now eighteen, would be heading for Avery Hill Teaching College this very summer, in expectation of doing very well indeed. It was rather a lot for Lucille to live up to, although truth be told she did not quite share her sister’s enthusiasm. She had resigned herself to this fate mainly out of the grim knowledge that she was unlikely ever to follow in Louise Brook’s footsteps and be accepted into a major New York dance company. There were fragments of shattered china ornaments to testify to that, the result of her attempts to practice the Charleston and the Shimmy in the limited floor-space of their living room. All the same, she was not resigned to a glamour-free existence, and put a lot of effort into fighting against that dire possibility.