A Lesser Evil

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘The Dale Street Obsession,’ Dan exclaimed, rolling his eyes. ‘Everything that happens to anyone is always down to Alfie Muckle. If Martians landed in London that would be his fault too.’

  ‘They’ve had years of bitter experience with him,’ Fifi said indignantly. ‘You should have heard the row last night! He’s a monster.’

  ‘I agree he’s a wife and child beater, a slob and a lazy thieving bastard, but that still doesn’t make him responsible for every single crime committed in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Maybe not, but Frank, Stan, Yvette and even Miss Diamond all say –’

  ‘He’s the son of Satan, I suppose.’ Dan cut in before she could finish. ‘You shouldn’t listen to them, Fifi. They’re all losers too.’

  ‘They aren’t,’ Fifi said incredulously. ‘What a horrible thing to say! I thought you saw them all as friends?’

  Dan shrugged. ‘I do, but it doesn’t blind me to their faults. If they had anything about them at all they would’ve moved away years ago. But they stay, and moan about the Muckles. And you know why? Because that family make them feel better about themselves.’

  ‘Dan! That’s a wicked thing to say. Maybe they can’t afford to move, perhaps they’ve tried and can’t find anywhere. I don’t believe for one moment that they feel better about themselves just because they have ghastly neighbours.’

  Dan gave her one of his looks that said he thought she was naive. ‘I know how it is for them, sweetheart, because I’m guilty of it myself. Your parents look down on the way I speak, the way I look, and my job, and let’s face it, I’ve justified their belief I’d bring you down to my level by taking you to live in Dale Street. But I feel at home there. I can look across to the Muckles and see the blankets across their windows and feel dead smug because we’ve got nice curtains. No one looks down on me there for working on a building site. I’m even the envy of every other man in the street because I’ve got a gorgeous wife.’

  ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ Fifi said peevishly. She hated it when he put himself down. ‘That bang on the head must have done you more damage than I thought.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s always studying the neighbours,’ he said. ‘I would’ve thought you’d seen it by now.’

  Fifi decided that it was anxiety and pain that were making him look at things with such jaundiced eyes. In a day or two he’d probably regain his normal optimism, so there was no point in her arguing with him. ‘So when did they say you could come home?’ she asked.

  ‘Not for a couple of days at least,’ he said. ‘Look, why don’t you make the most of having today off, and go home to your parents for the weekend?’

  ‘Home to them!’ Fifi exclaimed, thinking the bump on the head must be worse than he thought. ‘They haven’t even answered my letter about the baby. They won’t want to see me!’

  Dan took her hand in his and caressed it, his dark eyes boring into hers. ‘You don’t know that! I was thinking about it before you arrived. Maybe they’ve been waiting for you to make the first move? I don’t like the thought of you alone all weekend in the flat, and it will be a darned sight easier for you to make it up with them without me around.’

  ‘Mum will just be nasty,’ Fifi said stubbornly. ‘I know she will.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure,’ Dan said firmly. ‘Ring them and see what they say. If they blank you off you’ve lost nothing. At least you’ve been big enough to give it a try.’

  As Fifi had always considered she was the wronged party, she believed that it should be her parents who should offer the olive branch. But she liked the idea of being magnanimous – her father at least would see it as a sign she’d grown up. And if she made it clear she was coming home alone, her mother wouldn’t be so edgy. Once there, with Patty getting all excited about the baby, it would be hard for her mother to stay on her high horse.

  ‘But even if Mum was agreeable, how could I go and leave you in here?’

  ‘Why not? Normal visiting hours are only an hour, twice a day, it would be daft staying in London just for that.’

  ‘But you’d hate not having a visitor,’ Fifi argued.

  ‘It’s the weekend, some of the blokes from work might come,’ he said with a shrug. ‘And even if they don’t, I won’t mind. I can chat to the nurses or the other patients. Or just catch up on some sleep.’

  Dan never said anything he didn’t mean, so Fifi knew he really would be happy enough here alone. Her mother had always claimed that Fifi was as stubborn as a mule, so it would take the wind out of her sails just getting a phone call. She really did want to make the peace now with a baby coming, and perhaps this was the golden opportunity to call a truce.

  Dan was right, she didn’t relish the weekend stuck alone in the flat, especially when it was so hot. She could see the garden at home in her mind’s eye, the lush grass, the trees and flowers, and she could imagine herself lying on a blanket reading a magazine, with her mother bringing her out a glass of her homemade lemonade. It would be so nice to sleep in her old room, to see her brothers and sister, maybe catch up with a few old friends on Saturday night.

  ‘Ring her,’ Dan said firmly, perhaps sensing she was wavering. ‘You’re having their grandchild, for heaven’s sake! You’ll want them in the picture when he or she is born. Then there’s Patty and your brothers, they’re going to be aunty and uncles, and they’ll be thrilled to see you. I don’t want you to be home alone all weekend either, so please, do it for me!’

  Fifi felt a surge of love for Dan. He was hurt, yet he wasn’t thinking of himself, only her. If their positions were reversed she knew she wouldn’t be that noble or generous. She really did have to go along with his idea.

  ‘Okay, I’ll phone, but I’ll only go if she’s nice. I’m not going all that way just for more rows.’

  He took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Meet her halfway,’ he said. ‘But just don’t get to like it at home so much you decide to stay.’

  ‘As if I could live without you,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss him. ‘And a couple of days of Mum and Dad bending my ear will be more than enough to send me scooting back to you.’

  Frank and Stan met up on Friday evening in the Rifleman. As always at the weekend it was packed to capacity, and because it was a warm night, the doors were propped open and many people had taken their drinks outside.

  The news of Dan being attacked had been passed around, and Frank had found himself the centre of attention since he arrived in the pub because he lived downstairs to the couple.

  Frank told them all he knew, and as always when there was trouble in the street, Alfie’s name was put in the frame, but Cecil Helass was quick to point out that Alfie had been too busy thrashing Molly to be held responsible.

  ‘He could’ve ordered that half-wit nephew of his to do it,’ Frank said contemptuously.

  Someone said that he’d seen Mike come home with Dora after the fight was over, and a couple more people confirmed they’d seen that too.

  ‘But young Fifi! Who is watching out for her while her husband is in hospital?’ Stan asked nervously.

  ‘She’s gone home to Bristol,’ Frank said. ‘Dan made her go.’

  Stan waited until the other men had moved away from him and Frank before questioning his friend more closely.

  ‘Fifi tell me she fall out with her family over Dan,’ he said in puzzlement. ‘It is good that she is not alone now, but I think this put Dan more in bad light with her parents.’

  Frank nodded, knowing exactly what his friend meant. ‘I can see why they didn’t think much of him. I thought he were a bit of a wide boy when he moved in.’

  ‘Wide boy?’ Stan repeated. ‘What is that?’

  ‘A bit fly, a rascal,’ Frank explained, and chuckled. ‘But I were wrong about him, Dan’s a decent sort, even Miss Diamond hasn’t found anything to complain about.’

  Stan smirked. He knew how fussy the woman upstairs to Frank was, she was considered to be a fire-eating dragon by a
lmost everyone in the street. ‘So Dan is worried the man who attacked him might hurt Fifi too?’

  ‘I reckon that’s about the size of it.’

  Stan mulled this over for a moment. ‘But when Fifi tell her family Dan has been beaten up, they will be certain he is a bad man.’

  Frank sighed. ‘Yeah, maybe, their sort always think the worst of everyone. They can’t believe a working man can be honest or have much the same values as them.’

  ‘This is how it is for me too,’ Stan replied sadly. ‘Because my English not so good, they suspect me of many bad things.’

  Frank put his hand on his friend’s shoulder in sympathy. ‘You should ignore them, pal. They wink about Yvette being a sex-pot just because she’s French. Danny O’Connor, at number nine, gets treated like he’s thick just because he’s Irish. I’ve never seen Yvette with a man and Danny has a degree in engineering. Daft prejudice, that’s what it is.’

  The two men nursed their pints in silence for some little time, both immersed in their private thoughts.

  ‘We must do something about the Muckles,’ Stan suddenly burst out. ‘It is not right for so many to live in fear of them.’

  ‘What can we do?’ Frank shrugged despairingly. ‘I’m too old to give Alfie a good hiding and anyway, Molly is the one behind most of their villainy.’

  ‘Perhaps we frame them for a crime?’ Stan said, his doleful expression brightening. ‘We plan something that would put them away for a long time?’

  Cecil Helass and his drinking partner Bob Osbourne, who lived at number 7, had been standing close enough to Frank and Stan to overhear what Stan had said.

  ‘Now you’re talking!’ Bob said with a wide grin. He and Cecil had both recently retired and they spent more time in the Rifleman than their wives liked, often reeling home so drunk they could barely walk. ‘We’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘It would have to be murder to be sure they would go for good,’ Frank said laughingly. ‘I’d cheerfully kill anyone in their family, even the kids.’

  Stan nodded in agreement before adding jokingly, ‘Then perhaps we kill one of their children? We make it seem like Alfie and Molly did it.’

  ‘Brilliant idea.’ Frank laughed. ‘That should sort out the problem.’

  ‘Now, now,’ Rosa the aging barmaid piped up from behind the bar. ‘You can’t plot murder in here!’

  ‘We don’t mean it, Rosa,’ Stan said quickly, regretting his bad joke.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she laughed. ‘I might’ve been tempted to help you.’

  Fifi sat at the kitchen table eating the sandwich her mother had given her, but she was tense, knowing by the way Clara was rattling dishes in the sink that she was boiling up for something.

  Everything had looked so hopeful at first. When Fifi telephoned that morning and asked if she could come on her own for the weekend, Clara hadn’t hesitated in agreeing, in fact she’d sounded delighted. Fifi purposefully didn’t mention what had happened to Dan, it was too hard to explain on the phone, but perhaps that was her first mistake, as maybe her mother got the idea she was walking out on him.

  When Fifi arrived, she took it as a good omen that her mother was wearing the pale blue linen dress Fifi had always said she looked so pretty in. While she didn’t hug her daughter, Clara did say what a lovely surprise the phone call was, and that she’d made up the bed for her.

  It was a bit disappointing to find that Patty had gone to a friend’s for the weekend. Her brothers were at cricket practice and her father had gone to see an old friend and wouldn’t be back till much later. But the house was as sun-filled and peaceful as she remembered, and Fifi felt that the time alone with her mother would be good for them both.

  Over a cup of tea Fifi explained about Dan being in hospital and why. When there was no real reaction, good or bad, she moved on to tell her mother about her job and the girls she’d made friends with at work.

  It was only when she said that she and Dan had been hoping to buy a little house before the baby arrived, but she supposed Dan might not be able to go back to work for a while, that her mother got up from the table to make the sandwich. She shot a few terse questions over her shoulder at Fifi – had she seen a doctor yet? Where would she go for antenatal care? – but it wasn’t until she gave her the sandwich and moved over to the sink, making far more noise than was normal, that Fifi realized trouble was brewing.

  ‘So why was he beaten up?’ Clara asked suddenly, her voice tight with disapproval.

  ‘I told you already, we don’t know,’ Fifi said evenly. ‘He’s well liked, he wasn’t robbed of anything, it’s a mystery.’

  Clara sniffed and turned back to the sink.

  Whenever Fifi thought about her mother, she always pictured her here in the kitchen as it held all her best childhood memories. Baking cakes with her mother, painting with Patty at the table, playing Scrabble with her brothers too. It had always been the heart of the house, a warm, inviting place, with her mother at the centre of it.

  It hadn’t changed in any way since she left to marry Dan. Pretty china on the dresser, family snapshots covering the larder door, the three-tier cake tin with a small Perspex window in each tier was still stocked with scones, flapjacks and a Victoria sandwich, just as it always had been. The yellow walls needed repainting and the checked curtains were faded, but it had been that way for years, and as her mother always said, it was clean, even if a bit shabby.

  But even though Fifi’s old photos were still on the larder door, she felt that was an oversight and they would have been removed if her mother had noticed them. Likewise, Fifi didn’t feel able to get up and help herself to something from the cake tin as she always had. She didn’t feel she was family any more, but just a visitor, and as such she must abide by the same rules that would apply to anyone visiting.

  ‘How do you and Dad feel about becoming grandparents?’ Fifi asked. She knew in her heart it was probably unwise to ask, but she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Feel about it?’ Clara said, wheeling round from the sink to look at her daughter.

  ‘Pleased, angry, indifferent?’ Fifi suggested weakly.

  ‘What is there to be pleased about? You are living in a couple of rooms, your husband has no prospects, and it strikes me you have been thoroughly irresponsible.’

  Fifi had made up her mind on the long train ride home that she would be sweet, generous and tactful, whatever her mother threw at her. But there was no way she could deal with that spiteful statement except with more spite.

  ‘It could be said you were irresponsible having four children while there was a war on,’ she snapped back. ‘And as I remember, you and Dad were helped to buy this house by his parents. Where would you have been living if not for that?’

  ‘Don’t answer me back,’ Clara hissed. ‘You go off and marry a worthless labourer who has neither brains nor breeding and expect us to be glad that you are producing his offspring!’

  Fifi reeled at the vitriol in her mother’s voice. ‘He is not worthless,’ she retorted, getting to her feet. ‘And he is a skilled bricklayer, not a labourer. And if breeding is what makes you so nasty, then I’m glad he hasn’t got any.’

  ‘Nasty! I’m just speaking the truth, my girl.’

  It was all too obvious that time hadn’t mellowed her mother’s views on Dan one iota, and out of loyalty to her husband Fifi knew she must make the final stand, even if that meant losing her family for good.

  ‘You aren’t speaking the truth,’ she hissed at Clara. ‘You are just airing your stupid prejudices and snobbery and showing how ignorant you are! You haven’t attempted to get to know Dan, if you had you might have found out how wrong you are about him. Well, I love him, I’m glad I’m having his baby, and as it was a mistake to come here, I’m going right back to him.’

  ‘Don’t be so hasty,’ her mother called after her as Fifi sped out to the hall and picked up her weekend bag. ‘You can’t go back to London now, it’s too late.’

  ‘It’s t
oo late for you to show any concern about me,’ Fifi threw back at her, then opened the door and left.

  Clara Brown stood for a moment in the hall, tempted to run after her daughter and apologize. She knew she shouldn’t have been so outspoken, but when Fifi rang this morning and asked if she could visit, her immediate thought was that her daughter’s marriage was on the rocks.

  But the moment Fifi came through the door, she knew that wasn’t so. Her daughter had a glow about her, and a calm that Clara recognized as the kind women had when they felt secure and happy. For a little while it had eased all Clara’s fears, but the moment Fifi told her what had happened to Dan, they all came back a hundredfold.

  Maybe it was true that Dan didn’t know his assailant, but she thought it far more likely he was involved in something unpleasant, maybe even criminal. Long before she actually met Dan she had an idea there was something shady about him. The story about him being abandoned as a baby sounded preposterous. She thought it far more likely that he’d spent his youth in approved schools and invented such a story to gain sympathy. When he and Fifi got married in secret, that was all the confirmation she needed. A convenient way of hiding his real origins.

  Of course she might have been less suspicious if Dan hadn’t been so handsome, but any man with filmstar looks would have made her question his motives in going after her daughter. She had voiced her misgivings later to Harry, and he had asked why she thought their beautiful daughter couldn’t attract an equally beautiful man. She hadn’t been able to explain that. But the truth was, she had retained an image of Fifi as plain and anti-social, the way she was when she was a child. And just as she’d wanted to protect her from harm then, she still did.

  No one fully appreciated what she’d been through with Fifi when she was little, not even Harry as he was away so much in the war years. As a baby she hardly slept, screaming her head off half the night, and when Patty was born Clara had to watch like a hawk because Fifi was always prodding and poking her. She’d throw her dinner on the floor, disobey every order, and she never allowed herself to be cuddled. Every single milestone – walking, talking and toilet training – she reached later than any other child.