May knew what he meant. With each passing week, a household item, so taken for granted before the war, would vanish from the list of available home comforts. Last week there was a run on toothbrushes. The smallest rumour was enough to spark panic buying. Foods were fast disappearing from the daily menu. Oddly, the commonest items seemed to cease first, so that sugar, butter and bacon were rationed while milk chocolate remained available.
At lunchtime, Bryant took his new partner for a walk down to the Thames. The city was turning itself into a fortress, barricaded, sandbagged and patrolled in imminent expectation of invasion.
‘What topsy-turvy times we live in,’ laughed Bryant, striding across the windy reach of Waterloo Bridge, his scarf flapping about his prominent ears. ‘I’ve stood here after the alert has sounded and watched the German bombers flying low along the river, dropping their loads on the docks, then I’ve gone back to the unit to investigate a theft of cufflinks from some diplomat’s quarters in Regent’s Park as if it was the most important thing in the world.’
‘What’s your speciality?’ asked May, pacing beside him.
‘Mine? Academic studies, really. Classics. Abstruse thought. The HO thought the war might throw up a few cases that need sensitive handling, and realized that there were no brainboxes in the field of detection.’
‘Who decides which cases we get?’
‘Well, Davenport likes to pretend he does, but the orders come from higher up. He’s not a total dunderhead, of course, just ineffectual. I think being placed in charge of this unit is a bit beyond him. He’s rather straitlaced. The RAF wouldn’t have him because he’s short-sighted, and he’s still miffed. My word, I don’t like the look of that.’
In the distance white clouds were breaking, and shafts of sunlight glowed above patches of oily water.
‘They’re trying to restrict movement around the city, putting up a lot of barricades, something about not wanting too many people out on the streets, but I managed to flannel a couple of passes out of Davenport that should get us anywhere we want to go. Where do you live?’
‘I’m staying with an aunt in Oakley Square,’ May explained, leaning on the white stone balustrade and looking down into the water. ‘Camden Town. I’ll be able to walk in if the services are disrupted. I was born in Vauxhall, not a very salubrious area, but my mother managed to get me into a decent school.’ He laughed. ‘They’ve shifted all the children from our local Mixed Infants down to Kent for the duration. Poor people of Kent.’
‘I heard a country woman on the wireless say that she would rather take a savage from Fiji than a child from Birmingham,’ said Bryant. ‘Those kids will probably give the countryside a good shaking up.’
‘I take it you’re a town man, then.’
‘Lord, yes. I went on a hop-picking holiday once and was never so miserable in my entire life, although I did learn how to poach rabbits. I’d hate to be out of the city and miss all this. Everyone’s so friendly all of a sudden. I think it’s because we’re part of something at last, not pulling in different directions. Can’t you feel it? Things are shaking up instead of sticking where they’ve always been. Remember how everyone used to hate the ARP wardens before Christmas, going on about how they did nothing except play darts and cards all day? Look at them now, being treated like heroes. I think some good will come of it. The old sangfroid is starting to melt, don’t you think? Lords and layabouts sharing the same misfortunes.’
‘Spoken like a communist,’ joked May.
‘I believe in liberty but I’d fight for it, I’m not a conchie,’ said Bryant hastily. The wind was watering his pale eyes. ‘I’d like to have fought in the Spanish Civil War but I didn’t know anyone else who was going. There aren’t too many people in Whitechapel who’ve heard of Franco. I think it’s mostly the upper classes who can afford to support their ideologies, not us proles. And you don’t have to be politically astute to know that Neville Chamberlain behaved like an arse. I was sixteen when I saw newsreel footage of Hitler’s Congress of Unity and Strength, and I remember thinking, nothing good will come of this. All those fervent torchlight parades. If I could see it, why couldn’t politicians? Are you a Catholic?’
May was taken aback. ‘No, C of E. Why?’
‘You have the unperplexed attitude of a boy raised by priests. Practising?’
‘Not terribly regular.’
‘So what’s your take on all this?’
May looked gloomily into the shadows beneath the bridge. ‘I suppose we’re being tested.’