a bad evening’s work. The Yanks put down five-pound notes like they were ten-bob notes, and Con reckoned he’d got himself a good hundred pounds or so in tonight’s haul. Not that it was all profit, of course. He’d have to give that lazy good-for-nothing pair Stu and Paul a tenner apiece to keep them sweet, and then there’d have to be another tenner to Joe the landlord for the use of his upstairs room and no questions asked, seeing as gambling was illegal.
‘Look, lads,’ he told the Americans, putting his arm round the shoulder of the one his aces had just trumped in a false gesture of bonhomie, ‘seeing as you’ve been such good sports, I’ll treat you each to a drink. Show’s almost over at the Royal Court and there’ll be plenty of pretty girls wanting to be taken out for a bit of supper, so why don’t you all come back with us?’
It worked like a charm every time, Con congratulated himself as the young men immediately forgot about the money they had lost and accepted his offer with enthusiasm. Or at least all but one seemed to have accepted it. The soldier whose kings Con had just so cleverly trumped – with the aid of some trickery that had allowed him to remove the aces from the deck right at the beginning of the game and keep them concealed within his own hand of cards – was glowering at him.
‘You know what Ah reckon, boys?’ he announced in an accusatory voice. ‘Ah reckon that this guy here’s been cheating on us.’
‘Come on, Chip. Don’t be a sore looser,’ the first soldier to drop out of the game cautioned him. ‘It’s only a few bucks, after all. Let’s go and see these girls.’
‘That’s right, it’s only a few bucks,’ Con immediately agreed, smiling genially, urging them all towards the door. Once he’d had a couple of drinks and been introduced to the chorus line, the young soldier, who was still glaring at him, would soon forget about his ‘few bucks’. The last thing Con wanted to do was antagonise this new source of income he had discovered. What Con wanted was for these young soldiers to feel they’d had such a good time that they encouraged their friends to ask for an introduction to him for ‘a friendly game of cards’ and the chance to meet pretty girls.
Funny how things turned out. Who would have thought that those card tricks of old Marvo the Magician, who did the panto every Christmas, would come in so handy?
Oh, yes, Con was well pleased with himself. After he’d given Joe his tenner, Con gave the barmaid a wink and patted her on the bottom on his way past.
‘’Ere, get your hands off of that,’ she warned him, but the smile she was giving him told Con that she’d be more than willing if he wanted her to be.
He’d always had a way with women – had his way with them, and all, Con thought to himself, grinning at his own mental joke as he paused briefly as he left the pub to check his reflection in the glass partition that separated the entrance from the taproom, smoothing down his still thick and dark hair. When it came to women you either had it or you didn’t, Con acknowledged, and he had ‘it’ in spades.
Life had really been on the up and up for him since the Americans had started to arrive in Liverpool. It was only natural that they’d find their way to the Royal Court Theatre; Con prided himself on having the best-looking girls in the city in the Royal Court’s chorus. Then when he’d found out about their free-spending ways, of course he’d wanted to channel some of that money in his own direction.
It had been one of the girls who’d told him that an American had been asking her if she knew anywhere where they could join a poker game, and Con had immediately seen a golden opportunity to make some extra money.
Con whistled happily to himself as he shepherded his little group of newly fleeced lambs through the blackout’s darkness of the narrow back alleys towards the Royal Court Theatre.
Katie had been surprised by how quickly her first day had passed. She’d accepted an invitation to go for lunch with several of the girls she was working with, queuing alongside young women both in and out of uniform, and men as well, in a nearby British Restaurant for a bowl of unexpectedly tasty soup and a cup of tea.
Now, having taken the Piccadilly Line from Holborn to Knightsbridge, she was walking a little uncertainly down Sloane Street towards her new billet.
She knew the area, of course, having lived in London most of her life before she had gone to work in Liverpool. Her mother had always loved going to Harrods and looking at the expensive clothes, but Katie, whose tastes were far more simple, had never imagined actually living in one of the elegant squares with their private gardens, which had looked very smart before Hitler’s bombs had caused so much damage to them and the city. It had shocked and hurt her to see just how much damage had been done.
The gardens belonging to Cadogan Place were split in two, bordered on one side by Sloane Street itself and on the three others by what she remembered as elegant four-storey properties, although it was impossible actually to see much of them in the dark and the blackout.
Her destination lay on the far side of the square and it was with some trepidation that, having found the house, she climbed the steps and knocked on the door.
She was still waiting for it to be opened when someone bumped into her from behind, almost knocking her over.
‘Oh crumbs, I’m most awfully sorry.’
‘It’s all right,’ Katie assured her. ‘No harm done.’
The other girl was wearing an ATS uniform, her cap rammed onto a mop of thick dark red curls.
‘Are you visiting someone?’ the small whirlwind of a figure, or so it seemed to Katie, asked as she produced a key to unlock the door.
‘Actually I’m supposed to be billeted here,’ Katie told her.
‘Oh, you’ve got poor Lottie’s room then. So dreadful for her when Singapore fell, with her parents both being out there. She was quite overcome by it, poor girl, and the medics have sent her on sick leave. I don’t think she’ll be coming back. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, not if you were her, and your parents had been killed – murdered, really – in such a shocking way? Her mother was at that hospital, you see, the one where the Japanese bayoneted those poor people.’
They were inside the house now, the front door closed, and a single gloomy light bulb illuminating what in happier times must have been a rather grand entrance, Katie suspected. Now, though, denuded of furniture, its walls bare of paintings and the stairs bare of carpet, the house looked very bleak indeed. But not as bleak, surely, as the outlook for the girl whose room she was taking, Katie thought soberly.
‘Oh, you haven’t got anyone out in Singapore, have you?’ the other girl asked, looking conscious-stricken.
‘No.’ Not Singapore, but Luke was fighting in the desert, even if he wasn’t hers any more, and the news from there was hardly much better than it was from Singapore.
‘You’re in luck with your room; it’s one of the best. Sarah Dawkins, one of the other ATS girls here, wanted to move into it but our billeting officer put her foot down. Jolly good show that she did as well, if you ask me, because Sarah gets a bit too big for her boots at times. Oh, no, now you’re going to think badly of us. We all get on terrifically well together, really.’
The front door suddenly opened and another
