He looked at my outstretched hand with suspicion for a moment, then slowly he smiled and reached out his own, the palm as pink as coral, and shook firmly. 'Pleased to meet you, Mr Palmer,' he said. 'I'm Cornelius Jubb.'
I smiled. 'Yes, I heard.'
He glanced over at Obediah and his cronies, who had lost interest now and become absorbed in a game of dominoes. 'And I don't know where the name came from,' he added.
I guessed that perhaps some Yorkshire plantation owner had given it to one of Cornelius's ancestors, or perhaps it was a contraction of a French name such as Joubliet, but it didn't matter. Jubb he was, in a place where Jubbs belonged. 'You don't sound Southern,' I said, having heard the sort of slow drawl usually associated with Louisiana on the wireless once or twice.
'Grew up there,' Cornelius said. 'Then I went to college in Massachusetts.'
'What are you doing here all by yourself?' I asked. 'Most American soldiers seem to hang around with their mates, in groups.'
Cornelius shrugged. 'I don't know, really. That's not for me. They're all . . . y'know . . . fighting, cussing, drinking and chasing girls.'
'You don't want to chase girls?'
I could have sworn he blushed. 'I was brought up to be a decent man,' he said. 'I'll know when the right girl comes along.' He gestured to the charm bracelet again and smiled. 'And this is for her,' he added.
I could have laughed at the naivety of his statement, but I didn't. Instead, I offered to buy him another drink. He accepted and offered me a Lucky. That was the beginning of what I like to think of as an unlikely friendship, but I have found that war makes the unlikeliest of things possible.
You might be wondering by now why I wasn't at war with the rest of our fine lads. Shirker? Conchie? Not me. I saw enough carnage at Ypres to last me a lifetime, thank you very much, but the fact of the matter is that I'm too old to be a soldier again. After the first war I drifted into the police force and finally rose to the rank of Detective Inspector. Now all the young men have gone off to fight, of course, they need us old codgers to carry the load back home. Just as I was getting ready to spend my twilight days reading all those books I never read when I was younger – Dickens, Jane Austen, the Brontes, Hardy, Trollope. Ah, well, such is life, and it's not a bad job, as jobs go. At least I thought so until events conspired to prove me wrong.
Cornelius, as it turned out, was one of about three hundred coloured persons – or Negroes, as the Yanks called them – in an engineering regiment transferred up from the West Country. During our conversations, mostly in the Nag's Head, but often later at my little terraced back-to-back over carefully measured tots of whisky, no longer readily available, I learned about hot and humid Louisiana summers, the streets, sounds and smells of New Orleans and the nefarious ways of the colour bar and segregation. I had already heard of problems between white and coloured GIs in other parts of the country. Apparently, the American military command wanted to institute the same sort of colour bar they had at home, but we British didn't want that. I had also heard rumours that in some towns and villages a sort of unwritten code had grown up, fostered by whispering campaigns, as regards which pubs were to be frequented by Negroes and which by whites.
I also learned very quickly that Cornelius was a shy young man, a bit of a loner, but no less interesting or intelligent for that. His father was a Baptist minister, and he had wanted his son to go to college and become a schoolteacher, where he might have some positive influence on young men of the future. Though Cornelius had instead followed a natural interest in and flair for the more practical and mechanical aspects of science, he was remarkably well travelled and well read, even if there were great gaps in his education. He had little geography, for example, and knew little beyond the rudiments of American history, yet he spoke French fluently – though not with any accent I'd heard before – and he was well versed in English literature. The latter was because of his mother, he told me. Sadly deceased now, she had read children's stories to him from a very early age and guided him towards the classics when she thought he was old enough.
Cornelius was homesick, of course, a stranger in a strange land, and he missed his daddy and the streets of his hometown. We both had a weakness for modern music, it turned out, and we often managed to find Duke Ellington or Benny Goodman broadcasts on the wireless, even Louis Armstrong if we were lucky, whenever the reception was clear enough. I like to think the music helped him feel a little closer to home.
All in all, I'd say that Cornelius and I became friends as that spring gave way to summer. Sometimes we discussed currents events – the 'bouncing bombs' raid on the Eder and Möhne dams in May, for example, which he tried to explain to me in layman's terms (without much success, I might add). We even went to the pictures to see Charlie Chaplin in
The Gold Rush
with a couple of broad-minded Land Girls I knew. That raised more than a few eyebrows, though everything was above board. As far as I could tell, Cornelius stayed true to his word about waiting for the right girl to come along. How he knew that he would be so sure when it happened, I don't know. But people say I'm married to my job, which is why my wife left me for a travelling salesman, so how would I know about such things?
One August night, just after the Allies had won the battle for Sicily, the local GIs all got a late pass in honour of Patton's role in the victory. After an evening in the Nag's Head drinking watery beer, Cornelius and I stopped up late, and after he left I was trying to get to sleep, my head spinning a little from a drop too much celebratory whisky, when there came a loud knocking at my door. It was a knocking I wish I had never answered.
Brimley Park was a thick wedge of green separating the terraces of back-to-backs on the east side and the more genteel semi-detached houses on the west. There was nothing else but a few wooden benches and some swings and a slide for the kiddies. Chestnut trees stood on three sides, shielding the heart of the park from view. There used to be metal railings, but the Ministry of Works appropriated them for the war effort a couple of years ago, so now you could make your way in between the trees almost anywhere.
Harry Joseph, who had been dispatched by the beat constable to fetch me, babbled most of the way there and led me through the trees to a patch of grass where PC Nash and a couple of other local men stood guard. It was a sultry night and the whisky only made me sweat more than usual. I hoped they couldn't smell it on me. It was late enough to be pitch dark, despite double summer time, and, of course, the blackout was in force. As we approached, though, I did notice about eighteen inches of light showing through an upper window in one of the semis. They'd better be quick and get their curtains down, I thought, or Obediah Clough and his ARP men would be knocking at their door. The fines for blackout violations were quite steep.
Harry had babbled enough on the way to make me aware that we were approaching a crime scene, though I never did manage to find out exactly what had happened until I got there. PC Nash had his torch out, the light filtered by the regulation double thickness of white tissue paper, and in its diffused milky glow I could see the vague outline of a figure on the grass: a young woman with a Veronica Lake hairstyle. I crouched closer, careful not to touch anything, and saw that it was young Evelyn Fowler. She was lying so still that at first I thought she was dead, but then I noticed her head move slightly towards me and heard her make a little sound, like a sigh or a sob.
'Have you called an ambulance?' I asked PC Nash.
'Yes, sir,' he said. 'They said they'll be here straight away.'
'Good man.'
I borrowed Nash's torch and turned back to Evelyn, whispering some words of comfort about the doctor being on his way. If she heard me, she didn't acknowledge it. Evelyn wasn't a bad sort, as I remembered. Around here, the girls were divided into those who didn't and those who did. Evelyn was one who did, but only the morally rigid and the holier-than-thou crowd held that against her. It was wartime. Nobody knew which way things were going to go, how we would all end up, so many lived life for the moment. Evelyn was one of them. I remembered her laugh, which I had heard once or twice in the Nag's Head, surprisingly soft and musical. Her eyes might have been spoiled for me by that cynical, challenging look that said, 'Go on, convince me, persuade me,' but underneath it all, she had been easily enough persuaded.
There was no mistaking what had happened. Evelyn's dirndl skirt had been lifted up to her waist and her drawers pulled down round her ankles, legs slightly spread apart at the knees. She was still wearing nylons, no doubt a gift from one of our American brothers, who seemed to have unlimited supplies. Her lace-trimmed blouse was torn at the front and stained with what looked like blood. From what I could see of her face, she had taken quite a beating. I could smell gin on her breath. I looked at her fingernails and thought I saw blood on one of them. It looked as if she had tried to fight off her attacker. I would have to make sure the doctor preserved any skin he might find under her nails.
I averted my gaze and sighed, wondering what sad story Evelyn would have to tell us when, or if, she regained consciousness. Men had been fighting a deadly campaign in Sicily, and even now, as we stood around Evelyn in Brimley Park, they were still fighting the Germans and the Japanese all over the world, yet someone, some man, had taken it into his mind to attack a defenceless young woman and steal from her that which, for whatever reason, she wouldn't give him in the first place. And Evelyn was supposed to be one of those girls who did. It didn't make sense.
My knees cracked as I moved. I could hear the ambulance approaching through the dark, deserted streets of the city. Just as I was about to stand up, the weak light from the torch glinted on something in the grass, half hidden by Evelyn's outstretched arm. I reached forward, placed it in my palm and shone the torch on it. What I saw sent a chill down my spine. It was a tiny, perfectly crafted tiger. The very same one I had seen so many times on Cornelius Jubb's 'lucky' charm bracelet.
It was with a heavy heart that I approached the US army base in a light drizzle early the following morning, while Evelyn Fowler fought for consciousness in the infirmary. It was a typical enough military base, with Nissen huts for the men, storage compounds for munitions and supplies, and the obligatory squad of men marching round the parade ground. Along with all the Jeeps and lorries coming and going, it certainly gave the illusion of hectic activity.
My official police standing got me in to see the CO, a genial enough colonel from Wyoming called Frank Johnson, who agreed to let me talk to Lieutenant Jubb, making it clear that he was doing me a big favour. He specified that army personnel must be present and that, should things be taken any further, the matter was under American jurisdiction, not that of the British. I was well aware of the thorny legal problems that the American 'occupation', as some called it, gave rise to, and had discovered in the past that there was little or nothing I could do about it. The fact of the matter was that on the 4th of August, 1942, after a great deal of angry debate, the Cabinet had put a revolutionary special Bill before Parliament which exempted US soldiers over here from being prosecuted in our courts, under our laws.
The colonel was being both courteous and cautious in allowing me access to Cornelius. The special USA Visiting Forces Act was still a controversial topic, and nobody wanted an outcry in the press, or on the streets. There was a good chance, Colonel Johnson no doubt reasoned, that early collaboration could head that sort of thing off at the pass. It certainly did no harm to placate the local constabulary. I will say, though, that they stopped short of stuffing my pockets with Lucky Strikes and Hershey Bars.
I agreed to the colonel's terms and accompanied him to an empty office, bare except for a wooden desk and four uncomfortable hard-backed chairs. After I had waited the length of a cigarette, the colonel came back with Cornelius and another man, whom he introduced as Lieutenant Clawson, a military lawyer. I must confess that I didn't much like the look of Clawson; he had an arrogant twist to his lips and a cold, merciless look in his eye.
Cornelius seemed surprised to see me, but he also seemed sheepish and did his best to avoid looking me directly in the eye. Maybe this was because of the scratch on his cheek, though I took his discomfort more as a reflection of his surroundings and hoped to hell it wasn't an indication of his guilt. After all, we were on his home turf now, where the coloured men had separate barracks from the whites and ate in different canteens. Already I could sense the gulf and the unspoken resentment between Cornelius and the two white Americans. It felt very different from Obediah Clough's childish attempts at bullying; it ran much deeper and more dangerous.
'Tell me what you did last night, Cornelius,' I said, the words out of my mouth before I realized what a mistake I had made calling him by his first name. The colonel frowned and Lieutenant Clawson smiled in a particularly nasty way. 'Lieutenant Jubb, that is,' I corrected myself, too late.
'You know what I did,' said Cornelius.
The others looked at me, curious. 'Humour me,' I said, feeling my mouth become dry.
'We were celebrating the victory in Sicily,' Cornelius said. 'We drank some beer in the Nag's Head and then we went back to your house and drank some whisky.'
The colonel looked surprised to hear Cornelius talk, and I guessed he hadn't heard him before. Where you were expecting some sort of barely comprehensible rural Louisiana patois, what you got in fact was the more articulate and refined speech of the New Englander, a result of the time Cornelius had spent in the north.
'Were you drunk?' I asked.
'Maybe. A little. But not so much that I couldn't find my way home.'
'Which way did you go?'
'The usual way.'