The Ha’penny Steps. Book 1. Maruska’s Story

Set against the background of the London Blitz, Peter Porteous lives over the Ha’penny Steps in Kensal Town. He has a day job as a factory supervisor, and he volunteers as an Air Raid Precautions warden. He spends a lot of time fire watching during the height of the bombing in 1940. He is also a black marketeer. In these times of shortages and rationing, he will trade in anything that turns a profit, but mostly women’s nylon stockings, cigarettes and alcohol. As far as one can during the height of the London Blitz, he has a relatively comfortable existence, dodging both the bombs and the attentions of the police.Porteous has a small group of ladies around him. Nancy Keeling is an upmarket prostitute working for an organised gang in London’s West End. She is shining a light for Porteous. Edith Bell is the landlady of the local public house. She has a friendly magistrate as a part-time lover as well as the occasional paying customer. Shira Adelman, a Polish refugee, is the unhappy wife of a crooked Jewish jeweller. Alice Halpin is Porteous’s deputy at the factory. Driven out of her family home because she is in a long-term relationship with her partner, Phyllis, she bumps along at the edge of London’s society. Together with Porteous business partner, Jimmy Ryan, the little group does what it can to maintain an existence during the height of the bombing. Into his life comes a refugee from the occupied Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Doctor Maruska Bergman has made the difficult journey across Europe to escape persecution from the Nazis, who are determined to kill every Jew. Maruska very quickly takes his heart, but she has some dark secrets that are slowly revealed. Book 1 of the trilogy tells the story of Doctor Maruska Bergman and her desperate attempt to save her family from the Nazis. Murder and mayhem follow our doctor as she navigates through the dark underbelly of London’s criminal gangs, prostitution, Nazi agents and the appearance of the serial killer, Gordon Cummins, who targets London’s sex workers.