One Shoe Gumshoe

I agreed of course and suggested that Martha could move into the second or third bedroom at the flat while Pattie stayed with me. I called Jenny Mac while I was considering the arrangement and in my next letter let Mary know that Jenny had approved it pro tem until Mary could make her feelings known. Mary wrote back approving the temporary arrangement.

Martha stayed on as housekeeper after Pattie returned to art school, and saw to my meals, and kept the place tidy while I was at work. She was used to looking after more than just one lodger, but soon she got to know everyone in the local community around 77 Denmark Hill, and began taking tea and biscuits or cakes down to Gus in his hairdressing shop. She also took on extra work by cleaning the pub in the mornings after preparing my breakfast. It seemed that Gus became so friendly with Martha that he proposed to her in April and they were married in May.

Now they come to work on the bus together in the morning, after I've left for work. Martha makes my bed, looks after my laundry and tidies up after me, as well as clean the pub and generally keeps company with Gus during the rest of the day, making sure he never forgets his gas mask.

I promised Mary that I would write a letter to her regularly and I do send her one or two letters every week and, every week, I get one or two letters in reply from Mary.

Because of the war, sometimes there's up to two or three weeks go by with none received then I get several letters turn up together. Mary tells me it is the same at her end. Pattie told me she gets a letter a month from Mary and my sister Hettie also gets the occasional letter.

Mary is always upbeat and lively in her letters and I try to match her bright mood in my letters, making light of the poor cold, wet and dull weather we have had from when she left in February until the beginning of June, when the weather changed to hot and dry for a couple of months. August was wet but so far the first week of September has been good. I also make light in my letters of the bombing and the lack of progress on the war fronts but couldn't help but be pleased that Germany's unprovoked attack on Russia in June actually reduced the threat of German invasion from France across the Channel.

Mary wrote from her ranch about how well her horses and cattle were doing, and from her recent location how Milly and she were coping with flies in the desert and the continual waiting around for the weather to change or the light to be just right for the next scene she had to shoot. She used a lot of that waiting time to write her letters, once she was confident in learning her lines.

To say I missed her deeply is an understatement, but we both keep our personal statements to be light. Although she always started her letters "My Dearest Ed", I regarded this more as though I was just the most highly regarded of all the single "Ed's" she knew on a casual basis.

I always started my letters with "Dear Mary" just as I would a formal letter. When I got to the end of my first letter, written the evening of the very day we waved each other goodbye, I discovered that I was completely unaccustomed to write anything other than formal letters. The last letters written to someone I was in love with was during the First World War, when I happily addressed the letters to Mildred as "My Sweetheart" and the salutation along the lines of "Truly yours", "With all my love/devotion", etc, because we had an acknowledged romantic relationship, Mildred and I were engaged to be married. But what salutation should I use with Mary?

I looked closely at her card again. She was affectionate and had called me her "dearest" in the address, "darling" in the body of her inscription and "all my love" and "yours forever" at the end, with three added kisses. But then she had told me at the outset that she was a harmless flirt.

I opted to finish with "from your most devoted servant, Edgar", and hoped that would suffice.

Her next two letters when they arrived continued to address me as "Dearest" and end "all my love" and "yours forever" at the end, with three kisses.

That reminded me that I hadn't put any kisses at the end of my first or second letters, sent before I received her first, so this time I closed out the letter with a brief paragraph of how I still remembered her in my dreams, particularly the taste and tingle of that one solitary kiss that shocked me on our departure. I signed out that letter with, "All my kisses are yours, Mary, but I send you just the one until we meet again, even if such is but in my dreams, Edgar X".

It was two or three letters later, as letters crossed in between, that she opened with "My darling Ed" and remarked on our last kiss through the carriage window and looked forward to a repetition, signing off, "your loving Mary, storing up all your X's until we meet again".

Then we settled into a series of notes where neither of us referred to any relationship between us in the body of the letters but always used brief endearments at the top and foot of our letters. I thought perhaps she had cooled somewhat and believed that now she was back in her normal life that our brief acquaintanceship was just that, brief and of little consequence.

I wasn't surprised that the brief intensity of our close relationship had faded. It was born out of our partnership in a common aim, facing threats to our lives and each saving the lives of the other. We had been thrown together in high emotions, the disappearance and then murder of the husband she respected and loved, the threats to her life and the two lives she took to save my life and survive those threats, all far from home and the family she loved and was assuredly loved by, were emotions that inevitably had to come down to normal levels where the reality of our respective backgrounds and our hopes and aspirations are more easily seen in perspective.

Her mild and temporary infatuation with me, who was constantly with her and facing the same dangers, was understandable and, although I knew I loved her and was certain that I always would love her, I was reconciled to continue our relationship as friends would be maintained as long as possible. I looked forward so much to her wonderfully uplifting letters, they always brought smiles to my lips as I read and reread them. They always lifted my spirits. So, from about June onwards, I would sign "Your devoted friend, Edgar X", fully expecting our letters to drop off to one a week, then one a month before tailing off altogether, knowing that should they ever stop, I would be left with memories that would always warm my heart.

So, from about June onwards, I would sign "Your devoted friend, Edgar X", fully expecting our letters to drop off to one a week, then one a month before tailing off altogether.

***

I had a visit at the Yard from Jenny Mac late one morning in August. There she invited me to lunch at The Savoy, as her treat, so I got Jock to drive us both there. I assumed she was going to give me bad news about my continued tenancy or otherwise at the flat or that Mary was not coming over as we had expected the following month.

"So, Ed, when are you gonna get your head out of your arse and get with the plan?"

Jenny spoke plainly after we had given the waitress our luncheon orders and disappeared out of earshot. By this time my hearing in my left ear had returned to normal.

Jenny was a hell of a character, elegant and very well turned out for a woman in her mid-fifties, having been a successful publicity agent for over twenty years, with clients like Parisian fashion houses and parfumerie companies on her books before the war and was still thriving despite the current difficulties in London and beyond.

Jenny's husband was in the oil shipping business and his company had lost a quarter of his ships and half the ships' crews by August 1941, but the news on the greater numbers of U-boat sinkings was promising and he was still finding brave merchant seamen who were prepared to run the gauntlet of the Battle of the Atlantic to get at least part of the millions of tons of food, fuel and materials needed to keep the British Isles alive and resisting the might of Nazi Germany, who now had all Europe under its yoke, were making serious inroads into Russia and now had our North African army under siege and trapped.

"What plan?" I asked in all innocence.

"The plan to get Mary Jones and Edgar Onslow together as a devoted couple as soon as this damned war's over and live happy ever after for the rest of their natural lives."

"But ... Mary is ..."

"Beautiful, loving, passionate, rich —"

"Yes, yes," I said waving my hands around in front of me, "All of those things but she is also adored by millions, she's the sweetheart of whole families from children to grandparents. She is the fantasy of every hot-blooded male on the planet who has been unable to avoid her images that are everywhere. I didn't even know who she was seven months ago and, since meeting her, I now see her pictures and hear her name mentioned everywhere I go. Even the man who has everything they ever wanted desires her above all else. How could she possibly want me, when I have absolutely nothing to offer her?"

"You have the one thing that no other man in the world has, that no other man would ever have, Edgar," Jenny said softly, putting her hands on mine and clasping them together as if I was in prayer.

"And what might that be? I am only be able to make what little savings in the building society that I have because I'm living for free in her flat and driving her car like an Italian gigalo. What 'one thing' could I possibly have that no-one else has?"

"Her heart, Edgar. You have her heart, here in your hands. Her heart belongs to no other. You are a good man, Edgar Onslow, a very good man. You are smart, brave, loyal, resourceful and honest. A good copper, one who has earned lots of respect, not only from other good coppers, but villains that you have treated fairly, talented children, friends and neighbours and, last but not least, a woman who values your qualities above all others and wants to share the rest of her lifetime with you. She feels from your letters that she's losing you."

"I don't know what to say."

"Tell me how you feel about her for a start."

"I ... I love her, of course I love her. She warned me that I would fall in love with her and she told me not to."

"She didn't mean to tell you that. At least she might only have meant it on first meeting you, on first meeting any ordinary man, but later, when she knew you for who you are, she didn't mean it to apply to you and she certainly doesn't mean it at all now. You're breaking her heart, Edgar."

"Oh dear. What do I do now, Jenny?"

"Tell her how you feel about her. Tell her you love her and tell her just how much you love her. Then continue to tell her every day all the way through the rest of your lives together."

"I suppose I better get a ring."

"Yes, you better." She dug a card out of her clutch purse and passed it across to me.

I picked it up. It was a card from a well-known jewellers in Hatton Garden. I was a little disturbed at the little crest in the corner that read "By Appointment to HM King George VI", it looked like a ring from here might be well out of my financial reach.

"Speak to Jolyon at that address, he is expecting you today. He owes me a few favours, for introductions, persuasive arguments, you know, he'll see you right. I know from Mary that you have your mother's engagement ring, he can reuse the precious metal by melting it down and recasting it and use the original stone or as a compliment to the setting of a new stone. You might require a small loan to cover the cost but Jolyon is prepared to offer you that and I know you can cover it."

"She joked about marrying a Wild West Sheriff after the war. But I'm just a city copper, Jenny."

"A high ranking copper who is highly regarded and soon to be highly rewarded by his royal patron."

"But, I only got the letter from the Palace this morning, I'm supposed to keep mum about it for the next three weeks."

"Of course you must keep it mum, Edgar, and I know you will, but just think for a moment. You are allowed to bring a guest to the Palace. How fitting would it be to receive congratulations for you and your fiancée from the King and Queen, especially as the two princesses have long been devoted fans? Almost as nice as it will be to have your King's personal gallantry medal, pinned on your chest, I think. And, by the end of the war, Edgar, immediately upon your retirement from your long and distinguished career, before enjoying your final years on a ranch in the wide open prairie, my crystal ball tells me that you will be invited to the Palace again and this time a certain Lady Mary will regard that honour higher than any Oscar she might collect along the way."

"But you cannot know...."

"Of course I don't know everything Edgar, but I would never let my dear friend Mary Jones down, ever. Will you ever let her down?"

"No, I wouldn't. I won't."

"Well, eat up, Edgar, my driver is telling your driver exactly where the jewellers in Hatton Garden is and Jolyon is expecting you. And Edgar...."

"Yes?"

"Mr Sims is expecting you to collect your full dress uniform as a Police Chief Superintendent in two weeks in plenty of time for the medal ceremony and the film premiere, no need for a fitting, he says, he has your measurements."

***

So I wait on this draughty platform somewhat nervously for Mary's train to arrive, the Station Master has already come down to where I stand and told me that the telegraph has informed him that the Express was running eight minutes late at Reading General, but they should make up at least five minutes of that time on the final run into the capital.

I straighten my tie, check that my gas mask sits correctly in its smart new leather pouch which compliments my new suit, check the ring box in my right trouser pocket for the umpteenth time, knowing my shiny 1914 silver King George V shilling was slipped into the bottom of the box to signify my signing up to serve my future bride for the rest of my days.

Then I try to relax, waiting for my very own Mrs Mary Jones to arrive for the very first day of the rest of our lives.

The End