Last Rights Read Online Free PDF Page B

whatever come to hand, wouldn’t she? Maybe he’d just been down one of them certain
     houses in Rathbone Street and forgot to pay his dues.’
    ‘In a raid?’
    Aggie shrugged again. ‘Hitler don’t stop what goes on down there,’ she said, and her voice broke into a coarselaugh. ‘And them as don’t pay get what’s coming to ’em. Maybe one of the girls spiked him.’
    ‘With a hatpin?’
    ‘I’ve heard it said, yes.’ Aggie puffed heavily on her cigarette and looked me hard in the eyes. ‘I’ve never heard of no one
     killed. But some blokes, some of the rougher ’erberts at work, well, they say they’ve been spiked in the leg. Not all of them
     girls down there have blokes looking out for them. I’d’ve thought you’d’ve known that, Frank.’
    And then, before I could even draw breath to protest, she left. Not that I would have protested. For our own various reasons,
     both Aggie and I know Rathbone Street – or, rather, certain houses and ‘ladies’ in it. Some of the blokes at Tate & Lyle are
     regulars down there. Getting what they need, then going back to the factory and talking about it in loud voices in front of
     the women. Working men, relieving their frustrations with street women, well, it’s just what they do, isn’t it? Stops the
     wives complaining about getting in the family way all the time if nothing else. But what if a man hasn’t got a wife? And what
     if that man’s skin is the colour of tea and his job is about burying the dead?
    I only go down there to see Hannah. I don’t go often and we talk as much as anything. She’s bright, Hannah. Things just turned
     out bad for her, a bit like they did for Aggie. Difference being, of course, that Hannah doesn’t have family. Now she has
     to put up with all sorts, including me, and the way her situation sometimes makes me go on. ‘There’s no point talking,’ she
     alwayssays. ‘I have to see men as well as you and you have to pretend you don’t come here.’ Which I do, although Aggie knows. I
     don’t know how because we’ve never spoken about it, but she knows.
    I covered the body over then and turned out the light. Maybe I would ask Dr O’Grady just to take a look at that thing below
     his breastbone, just to see whether what Aggie had said was possible. Or maybe I’d go and see Hannah, ask her whether what
     Aggie had said could be true. I’d have to be careful, of course, down there. Canning Town, where Rathbone Street is, can be
     a rough place even in the daytime. Not that I stick out. Lascars, black men and all sorts get down there. Men off the ships,
     torpedo-happy and far from home. Although not all of them are simply passing through. Down Victoria Dock Road there’s what
     I suppose you might call a community of Lascars. That poor, squalid little area is only a minute or two from Rathbone Street.
     Me, I’m just another dark bloke, invisible really, visiting a woman who sees a lot of blokes like me. Not that all of the
     women will happily entertain my colour even if, as Hannah’s told me, I’m taken for a Jew more often than not.
    When I went to bed that night I thought about how I might get out to see Hannah. It’s not often possible and I only ever do
     it when I can get an hour away from the shop with no questions asked.
    Although the sirens did go off eventually that night, the raid, when it came, didn’t affect us that much and so, although
     I did go outside, I got off to sleep. Out in the yard, leaning against the stable, I thought about Hannahand what she might be able to tell me with regard to my corpse. Better, really, would be to go round the corner to Dr O’Grady
     and get him to come and have a look. But as well as wanting to know about my unknown man I was also keen, I knew, to see Hannah.
     Same age as me, lonely and hurting inside, Hannah is the nearest thing to a wife I’m ever going to have. At that moment, just
     before I dropped off among the smell of horse dung, I tried to