The Widow Ginger

by Pip Granger

  ‘Hang about, Shoog. Who is this Widow Ginger? A bloke, is it?’

  ‘Sorry, Luigi. I s’pose you’re a bit young to remember him. His name’s Stanley something or other – he has one of those foreign-type surnames full of js and zs that I can’t get me mouth round. He was in business with Bandy, Maltese Joe and Bert during the war. Army surplus you might call it, only it wasn’t quite surplus when they got their mitts on it, if you catch my drift. He’s a Yank, came over with their military. According to Bandy, he can be a merciless sod, which is why everyone’s underwear’s in a bit of a tangle now he’s resurfaced. Mind you, I don’t s’pose I know the half of it. Bandy’s not exactly forthcoming when it comes to the gory details, as you well know.’

  Sugar paused for breath and I noticed the cup rattled loudly against its saucer as he handed Luigi his tea across the counter. Sugar was seriously worried, I could tell, and he deliberately changed the subject. ‘Now, did I hear you’d got yourself a job, or was I dreaming? Sit down, why don’t you, and I’ll join you while it’s quiet.’

  I sort of slid into a seat at the table with Sugar and Luigi, which is how I came to hear that Luigi was finally working after a time of what Uncle Bert called ‘creative lolling’. Normally, a Campanini would wind up working in the deli, but Luigi had never been keen and there was no shortage of labour among their mob. He took a gulp of his tea, leaned back in his seat and smacked his lips appreciatively. ‘Your tea’s almost as good as Maggie’s, Shoog, and that’s saying something. As it happens, I am a working man nowadays, yes. I’m running for Tic-Tac and doing very nicely so far, thanks very much. As my old papa always says, “Thees ees when you see the Italian at his best, when he is rrronning!”’ Luigi’s impression of Papa included full eye rolling and arm waving, as well as his thick accent. ‘And of course, he ain’t wrong, ’specially if the running is away from the men in blue and towards a thumping good wodge of dosh. With my mates and contacts, I’m not short of punters, and Tic-Tac’s passed on his regulars an’ all. He’s given me a cut of the takings, so it’s turned out sweet.’

  ‘That would explain why you’ve not been to our place in a while. I s’pose you’re hanging about at Running Jack’s.’

  Running Jack’s was a drinking club handily situated near the post office, which had a row of telephone boxes right outside. The runners, armed with a ton and a half of pennies, would be in and out of those boxes ‘like farts in a colander’, as Madame Zelda kept saying, despite Auntie Maggie’s pleas that she shouldn’t say it in front of me. The runners telephoned the bets through to their bookies before the race and then would call up again to get the results. Of course, in those days there was no such thing as a betting shop; people had to go to the track to put a bet on a horse. As only the rich and idle could make a regular habit of going to the races, the rest had to rely on bookies’ runners to place their bets for them and sometimes to dole out their winnings when they got lucky.

  To be a successful runner, you needed four things: a good memory, good legs, good contacts on the street and in the cop shop and plenty of pockets for stuffing betting slips, coins and crumpled notes into. Luckily, our Luigi was well qualified on all counts.

  The large figure of Auntie Maggie came out of the kitchen at that point and stopped just long enough behind the counter to pour another cuppa before joining us at the corner table. The cafe wouldn’t get really lively again until dinner time. The chicken and ham pies were made and only needed cooking, and the beef and carrot casserole was already in the oven waiting for the rush. She lowered herself carefully on to a seat, on account of not being built for flinging herself about in an unladylike fashion.

  Auntie Maggie’s lap was as soft and comforting as a large armchair, and despite being far too old I climbed into it. To be honest, talk of this Widow Ginger bloke had put the wind up me, especially after what had happened to me the year before. I really needed Auntie Maggie’s reassuring cuddle. Her plump arms wrapped themselves around me and I snuggled for all I was worth into her mighty bosom. She smelt of soap, Yardley’s face powder and just a dab of 4711 cologne behind each ear and down her cleavage, so that when she got warm the scent sort of wafted upwards and she got a whiff. She said it made a nice change from the smell of fry-up. She took a sip of tea, being careful not to tip it on my head, which was in the way.

  ‘You look half dead, Sugar. Even the bags under your eyes have got luggage. Surely there’s only so much daylight you can stand? Hadn’t you better get your head down for a bit before you turn into something?’ Auntie Maggie had given Sugar the once-over as she came across to our table.

  ‘She’s right, Shoog. You look as if the cat’s had you on the landing two or three times in the night,’ Luigi observed.

  ‘That’s just how it feels, Luigi, only we haven’t got a mog. No, it’s wondering what that Stanley’s up to and how Bandy and Bert are faring, that’s what’s doing me in. I’m better off keeping busy.’

  I didn’t dare move. I didn’t dare breathe in case I was sent away, just as things looked as if they might get interesting. Whenever the grown-up talk looked like turning really juicy, my beloved auntie Maggie would shoot the talker her ‘stop right there’ look, which made them act like goldfish at feeding time, mouths wide open but not a word coming out, until she’d dealt with me. She’d send me to do something like muck out my bedroom or fiddle with the jigsaw puzzle that lurked beneath the plush tablecloth in the front room. It was kept there for those moments when I was whining that I was bored and by some miracle my bedroom had passed muster. ‘How about that jigsaw?’ she’d say, and I’d know I was about to miss all the really tasty bits of gossip yet again. But not this time. I was like a statue willing the talk to continue, and it did.

  Sugar’s voice grew quieter as he spoke and I had to strain to hear him, what with one ear being stuffed with bosom, but it was worth it in a very scary kind of way. I learned that the Widow Ginger had been quiet, but really threatening as he told Bandy and Sugar that he was back to wind up some unfinished business. ‘He’s the coldest bugger I’ve ever met. Brass monkeys had better keep a good grip on their best bits when he’s around, I’m telling you. He thinks Joe, Bandy and Bert cheated him in the war. It had something to do with “getting him out of the way of the gravy train just before it got into the station”.’ He didn’t like the sound of it, he continued. It wasn’t so much what the Widow said that put a ferret up his jacksie, apparently, as the way he said it.

  My bum was numb, my lugs were flapped almost to tatters and my goosepimples had goosepimples by the time Sugar had finished giving us his impressions of the Widow Ginger. It reminded me of the Ghastly Godfrey, my mum’s stepfather and a really nasty piece of work. He was the one who had been behind me being snatched out of the school playground, belted in the mush and shoved into a cupboard the previous summer. I closed my eyes and there, like it was yesterday, were Godfrey’s dead-looking yellow eyes glaring at me across the snowy white tablecloth at the Marble Arch Lyon’s Corner House. I shuddered and opened my eyes quick to get rid of the awful picture. Sugar was talking again.

  ‘He may be a runt next to me, but then most blokes are. But he gives off this feeling that although he’s in control and all quiet-like, if he threw a wobbly then he would be a right beserker. A stop-at-nothing sort that’d be very happy to inflict all kinds of damage on a body.’ Sugar gave a sickly grin before carrying on. ‘He’s enough to give Bandy a sudden attack of charm, and you know what that means. She either wants to bed him or she’s afraid of him, and knowing Band as I do I’d say she was afraid. I always know that when she stops insulting ’em something’s up, and if she pours on the old oil she thinks the situation is serious.’

  Everyone sat around with worried looks on their faces until Auntie Maggie remembered me when I sort of squeaked in fright. She gave me a tight squeeze and came over all hearty. ‘What? Nothing better to do than earwig, young miss? All right then, how about giving your auntie Maggie a hand in the kitchen while I�
��m doing the veg? You can make pastry flowers for the pies, if you like. I’ve got some pastry left over in the larder.’ She tipped me gently off her lap and heaved herself to her feet.

  I thought that being in the warm, fragrant kitchen with Auntie Maggie until my uncle Bert got home was the very best place on earth to be. I liked being with one or other or both of them when there was trouble; it made me feel safer. By now, I knew that the Widow Ginger was a threat to us, but what made it really frightening was that I didn’t know what kind.

  3

  I was waiting on tables when Madame Zelda breezed in with a very tall, red-headed woman none of us had ever seen before. Although I say ‘waiting on tables’, I was only allowed to carry the non-sloppy food and the cold drinks, in case of spillage. Sugar was still behind the counter, Auntie Maggie was in the kitchen and Luigi had been in and out all morning. Mrs Wong was in as usual. She was always there in the middle of the day when things got busy. Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert did a fine line in home-cooked dinners, which meant we were always heaving with punters then. We offered a soup, a couple of main dishes and ice cream or a pie or tart with custard for afters, to keep it simple. A lot of the preparation was done the night before or early in the morning, before I turned the ‘Closed’ sign round to ‘Open’ and unbolted and unlocked the cafe door.

  Things that cooked slowly in the oven or on the hotplate in a saucepan were preferred, because they took the rush and bustle out of it. Winter was the best time for that, because then there were lots of stews and casseroles and soups that tasted all the better for hanging about on a low heat. Auntie Maggie was a dab hand at suet puddings, sweet or savoury, and was famed round and about for her spotted dick, Christmas pud and my own favourite, lemon syrup pudding. Her steak and kidney puddings were the best in the world, everybody said so. The way that the time-honoured routine of the cafe and the seasons, the menu and the shopping rolled on was comforting, like my liberty bodice in winter.

  That day, the menu was Scotch broth, chicken and ham pie or beef and carrot casserole, and apple pie and custard. The kitchen was still running along its usual well-oiled lines, despite Sugar’s early morning bombshell. As Auntie Maggie said, if Hitler couldn’t close our cafe with his rotten war, she was blowed if she’d let that damned Yank do it.

  Chicken and ham pies meant making pastry, and Auntie Maggie had whipped up loads the night before, and made the apple pies for pudding while she was at it. Chicken carcasses turned into stock and various soups, starting with cock-a-leekie or maybe cream of chicken. Ham bones also turned into stock and the next day’s soup would almost certainly be split pea and ham. The bones would be simmering gently on the back burner with odds and ends of vegetables, peppercorns and bay leaves floating about in the pan.

  The stockpots were bubbling away and Auntie Maggie was keeping me busy with laying the tables for the dinner trade. Routine, she said, was a good way to keep troublesome thoughts away. She was right, too. First, I went round all the empty tables wiping up spilt tea, sugar, bits of egg and dustings of fag ash. Then I went round with a bucket and emptied all the ashtrays into it – yuk! The ashtrays got a lick and a promise with a damp cloth and any empty salt and pepper shakers were filled while I was at it. Then I laid each place carefully with a knife, fork and two spoons, a round one for soup and an egg-shaped one for afters. Auntie Maggie reckoned that supplying the hardware to scoff with encouraged people to go the whole hog at dinner time, and try for three courses. Being chief-in-charge of table laying meant I learned left from right in double-quick time, and, as Auntie Maggie said, that was a bonus.

  Sugar rationing was finally over, which meant the precious stuff was no longer doled out grain by grain by Auntie Maggie behind the counter. Each table now had its own chunky glass bowl, complete with spoon. Some ignorant so-and-sos used the bowl spoon for stirring their tea instead of the one provided in their saucers, which meant that when they dumped it back in the bowl, still wet, it soon got crusty and brown and had to be replaced with a fresh one. What’s more, the sugar in the bowl formed hard brown lumps as well, and it was my job to pick them out with a pair of tongs and then replace them with fresh sugar poured from a large, thick paper sack of Tate and Lyle’s finest. The still recent memory of sugar shortages made us resent those wasteful claggy spoons and little brown lumps and sometimes, I must confess, I shoved a few in my gob. My cheeks were bulging lumpily and I was just thinking that Sugar was probably called Sugar Plum because he was so sweet when the beautiful Betty Potts walked into Luigi’s life and ours.

  You could tell Luigi was stunned the minute he clapped eyes on Betty. She certainly was a stunner. Six feet if she was an inch, and most of that legs, she had the most gorgeous red hair, skin the colour of rich cream with no freckles, and eyes that were green with brown flecks, like birds’ eggs. She really stood out, even round our way where the showbusiness hopefuls congregate and there is a lot of talk about beauty and glamour. Betty was already beautiful, and before long you just knew she’d be drop-dead glamorous as well. Working in the Soho clubs would see to that, but it didn’t change her nature. She’d stay the Betty we would come to know and like, a real sweetheart as Uncle Bert and Auntie Maggie always said, but my, didn’t she cause trouble?

  Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. But I can still see her now, walking into our cafe, alongside Madame Zelda. Betty didn’t seem to have a care in the world and simply glowed with health and vitality. Madame Zelda, on the other hand, was a bit red in the kisser, having had to scurry to keep up with her; her little legs were a good foot shorter than Betty’s and she was a martyr to her feet. Madame Zelda is the ‘Clairvoyant to the Stars’ who lives next door with Paulette above the offices occupied by Sharky Finn, who Uncle Bert describes as ‘Lawyer to the Bent’. Madame Zelda’s sign and Sharky’s brass plate nestle grubbily together on the green front door wedged between our cafe and the Campaninis’ deli.

  ‘Wotcha, Sugar,’ she said cheerily. ‘Meet Betty, new client and resident.’ Now, I know that Madame Zelda was dying to know why Sugar was behind the counter at our cafe and not grabbing a few million zeds in his bed above Bandy’s club, just as we were dying to know more about the lovely Betty, especially Luigi, who was staring, I swear, with his tongue hanging out. But she couldn’t ask, in case anyone suspected that she had a duff crystal ball or something. It never does to look surprised in her trade; it’s bad for business. And we couldn’t ask, because that would have been rude. So they ordered their dinners, the casserole for Betty and chicken and ham pie for Madame Zelda and teas all round, and I cleared a space on our table so that they could settle down.

  All Luigi had managed to do was lurch to his feet when they approached and fumble about with chairs a bit before sinking back into his, looking dazed. Pretty soon, the two women were tucking into their food and chatting about nothing in particular while Luigi gulped like a guppy in trouble.

  It turned out that Betty had arrived on a train from Brighton that very morning, had dumped her bags with a girl she knew who was in the chorus at the Windmill, and had come straight round to consult Madame Zelda. But she’d arrived at the very moment when Madame Zelda had her coat on to nip down to the cafe to feed ‘the inner soothsayer’ as Sugar put it, so they’d come together. I wonder if Madame Zelda saw all that was to unfold in her crystal ball?

  Madame Zelda and Betty Potts had just got to their afters when my friend Kathy Moon turned up with a memorized message from Uncle Bert. ‘Would Luigi please proceed with all haste round to Bandy’s place, preferably with a brother or brother-in-law or several in tow? Also to tell Sugar that the coast was well on the way to being clear and he could go home as soon as he liked.’ She said this in a single breath, her big brown eyes scrunched up in concentration. Once the message was safely delivered, word for word, her solemn face split into a huge relieved grin and her eyes sparkled with triumph.

  Luigi snapped to attention, rolled his tongue back into his cake’ole and left to find a few relatives,
as requested, while Sugar decided to stay until the rush was over and Uncle Bert was safely back in his kitchen. I could tell he was in his element. In between taking the money and doling out drinks, he was engaged in a lively conversation about what colours went best with auburn hair and what a good thing it was that Betty Potts had decided to embrace her great height and not to slouch because round shoulders did nothing for the hang of fabrics. Sugar could talk about clothes for ever, and there was nothing he liked better than meeting what he called ‘a decent frame’, just begging to be dressed by his own fair hand. Sugar really should have been a proper dress designer, with a salon and everything, but he always said that he preferred to keep it as a hobby among friends.

  About an hour after Luigi left, he came back with Uncle Bert and Bandy Bunyan. Seeing Bandy out in daylight was, luckily, a very rare event. She looked less like a horse sitting on a bar stool, glass in one hand and long cigarette holder in the other. The ruby-coloured glass lampshades in her place gave her complexion a soft and rosy glow, whereas sunlight made her look as if she’d recently been dug up. Of course, she’d had no sleep at all on top of what sounded like a very difficult night, so that hadn’t helped. Sugar took one look at her and without a word, produced a strong black coffee with a hefty slug of the brandy that Auntie Maggie always kept under the counter for Sharky Finn and emergencies.

  The brandy brought a faint blush of red to Bandy’s pasty cheeks and tired eyes. Auntie Maggie came out from the kitchen bearing a large cup of tea, the colour of mahogany wood stain, for Uncle Bert, who also looked exhausted. Nobody said anything until the pair had downed their drinks, apart from introducing them to Betty Potts, that is. Then Auntie Maggie made them each a plate of food and we all watched as they wolfed it down. More drinks followed, until Bandy finally found enough energy to speak.