by Pip Granger
Now, when the religious say ‘a better place’, they mean heaven, but when Luigi said it he didn’t. He meant a place called Ruby’s, where the Widow would be a more than welcome guest. Ruby’s wasn’t anywhere near us. In fact, it wasn’t even on our side of London. Ruby’s place catered for ‘certain appetites’ but nobody ever said what those were. I had visions of the Widow living entirely on fish and chips, treacle tarts and tons of gobstoppers, but our friend Paulette explained it had nothing to do with food, which left me stumped. What other kind of appetite could a person have? When I asked, I was told that I didn’t need to understand. What need had to do with it I’ll never know, because I was simply being nosy as usual.
When that line of inquiry dried up, I decided to ask Paulette about something else that had been bothering me. Everyone else had sort of skated round the question ever since I’d started asking it. Somehow I knew Paulette wouldn’t let me down.
‘Paulette?’ I said.
‘Yes, dear?’
‘Why’s the Widow Ginger called the Widow Ginger when he’s not a widow and he certainly isn’t ginger? I’ve seen him and he’s got fair hair.’
For a minute I thought that Paulette was going to change the subject to the weather or something boring like that and I was never going to find out but then she changed her mind. ‘It’s rhyming slang, Rosie love. Widow Twankey – you remember, like in Aladdin – means Yankee and ginger beer’s, well, queer. So it means the, er, queer American, like he’s a bit funny. You’ve noticed that yourself, I dare say.’
‘You bet I have,’ I assured her with a shudder. He really was a peculiar man, that was for sure. Frozen and frightening.
Anyway, everyone seemed to agree that whatever Ruby’s place was it was likely to keep the Widow busy, happy and, most importantly out of our hair long enough for us to form some sort of plan. According to Luigi, when Ruby and her helpers had finished showing Stanley a good time, it’d take him a week to be able to stand on his own two feet and a month for his liver to recover. Or maybe it was the other way round, I forget now. The point is, what with Ruby and one thing and another, the Widow was gone for quite a while.
The most important thing was it allowed time to break the news to Maltese Joe gently, if at all. Everyone carried on arguing about that one. It was agreed that once Maltese Joe knew that the Widow had resurfaced he was likely to go off half-cocked and that could cause even more trouble, and that it wasn’t going to be easy to steer Joe into a less explosive approach. Auntie Maggie blamed what she called ‘that hot Latin temperament of Joe’s and the deadly bleeding rivalry between the two of ’em’. Everyone agreed with her, but they still thought we should at least try to break it to Joe gently and the sooner the better. Auntie Maggie stuck to her guns, though. One word to Joe, and she and I were off to the seaside, maybe for ever.
Meanwhile, poor Luigi had troubles of his own. Perhaps one trouble would be more accurate, in the form of Betty Potts. Now, I knew something was the matter with him because he’d gone all sort of quiet and droopy. I had never seen a quiet and droopy Luigi before, although I was going to see it again, when I was getting all grown up and what Uncle Bert called ‘coming into my clog’ and Auntie Maggie called ‘turning into a swan’, though of course they were biased. But Luigi was not his usual bouncy, happy-go-lucky self and I began to wonder if he was ill. It was Madame Zelda and Paulette who put me straight on that one.
‘No, lovey, he’s not ill,’ Madame Zelda told me. ‘He’s just suffering from a bit of unrequited lust, that’s all.’
I must have looked blank because Paulette explained a bit more. ‘He’s got a pash on Betty, Rosie, and she ain’t playing at the minute, on account she’s got other things on her mind. She’s got to find a job, for one thing, and her mate Mary’s got the needle to her, because she’s one of Maltese Joe’s bits of sly and he’s taken a big shine to our Betty. So what with dodging him, keeping the peace with her mate, trying to find a place of her own and a way of paying for it, she’s a busy gel. Too busy to worry about men, anyway. And, of course, our Luigi ain’t used to that. He’s used to having to beat ’em off with a club, or not as the case may be. He’s just not used to having to work at it. Not that it’ll do him any harm. He can be a cocky little sod when it comes to women.’
Luigi- and Betty-watching became the favourite pastime of the cafe females, and very fascinating it was too. We had never, not once, seen the Campanini charm fail before, and judging by the effect it was having on Luigi he wasn’t used to it either. As Auntie Maggie said when she thought I wasn’t listening, ‘Normally he only has to smile to get ’em flat on their backs with their legs in the air and lending him money and feeding him for the privilege.’ But not this time, not with the magnificent Betty, who seemed to be immune to his charm and Italian good looks.
After a long, happy afternoon’s gossip, when Auntie Maggie, Paulette and Madame Zelda searched their collective memory and I listened with rapt attention, they agreed that it was definitely love and that they had never, ever seen it strike Luigi before.
‘As Sugar said the other day,’ Madame Zelda said, taking off Sugar’s husky voice to a T, ‘“The lovely Betty seems blissfully unaware of the stir she’s causing in the Campanini heart and trousers.” She’s far too busy dodging Maltese Joe’s dishonourable intentions, is what I told him.’
‘She told me that she didn’t go out with married men, on account of the way her dear old ma suffered because of her dad and his floozies,’ Paulette explained. ‘He’s a fast worker, that Joe. Betty’s hardly been here five minutes and he’s already breathing down her neck. Do you reckon she’ll give in when she realizes just who Maltese Joe is?’
‘I think she already knows, Paulette, but she’s not daft, that one. She seems to be able to tell him to get stuffed somewhere else without getting up his hooter, if you take my meaning. I’ve seen her in action. She can brush him off in such a way that he seems to love it.’ Madame Zelda leaned forward and instinctively we huddled closer too, forming a confidential little circle. ‘He was waving this fur coat at her the other day at Bandy’s when she was trying to have a nice quiet drink with Sugar, and she turned it down like she was doing him a favour, and what’s more he didn’t rant at all. The coat wound up on his missus’s back, according to Sharky. Where it should’ve been in the first place, if you ask me. Betty made him think it was his idea all along and what a clever bloke he was to treat Mrs Joe so well. Wound up making everybody happy, except p’raps his bit of sly. Now that’s clever. I’m telling you, don’t underestimate that girl. It’d be a big mistake.’
‘You’re right, Zelda,’ Paulette agreed. ‘I’ve seen her turn Luigi down too, and make him think that what he really wanted to do was go to the jazz club with the lads. It’s a treat to watch her working and I’m still blowed if I can see just how she manages it. It’s got something to do with that quiet little voice she uses on the blokes. She’s always so good-mannered about it, too, and really appreciative that they even thought to ask little old her.’
Auntie Maggie laughed and added her two penn’orth. By this time I was getting dizzy from my bonce turning this way and that as the women gossiped, but I stuck with it. ‘Then of course there’s that smile. It could melt an iceberg, that smile could. Mind you, looking like that, she must have had plenty of practice in her time, even though she’s still only a youngster. It must be a bit of a burden to be that good-looking, with a figure like that. She says she developed really young, too, poor little mite.’
Personally, I thought ‘poor little mite’ was coming it a bit strong, even for my auntie Maggie, who could turn an all-in wrestler into ‘a dear little thing’ when she put her mind to it. After all, Betty Potts was the tallest woman I had ever seen.
6
Of course, while all this stuff was going on, I had to go to school. I have to admit, I didn’t feel that safe at school because it was hard to forget that I’d been snatched from the playground only the summer before. A person
doesn’t forget that kind of thing in a hurry, especially when there was another nutter on the loose who didn’t seem to like us much either. Normally, though, I didn’t mind school because it was a bit of a relief to be among other kids so that we could do the usual kid-type things. There are all sorts of games that are either lonely or hard to play alone, like hide-and-seek, tag, knock-down-ginger, conkers, two balls, five stones and proper hopscotch, to name but a few. Where’s the jollies in always playing these games on your tod? You need your friends to get a giggle out of it. So school was all right.
Lessons could be boring sometimes, but most of the time I found learning things quite interesting, although it was more than my playground life was worth to admit that. The worst thing to be at school was a swot, a teacher’s pet. Well, actually, the very worst thing to be at school was a smelly sneak who dripped green snot candles all year round, like poor old Enie Smales. The next worse thing was to be too clever. It really was best to hide that particular light under your hat. Even when I knew the answers, I made sure that my hand didn’t shoot up too often and I never, ever, allowed anyone to see me reading for fun. Most of my school friends didn’t know that I was a secret reader, although Kathy Moon and Jenny Robbins, who were my best mates, did catch on in the end. Of course, they’d seen my bulging bookcases when they came to play, but they just figured that the books were presents from my missing mum, which many were. They didn’t think for a moment that I might actually read the things. The truth was, I not only read them, but I spent quite a lot of my pocket money at Mr Herbert’s lovely shop and I belonged to the library as well. But I never let on. When Kathy and Jenny found out my secret, they kept mum too. I didn’t ask them to, they simply understood, as any kid would and any adult wouldn’t.
Kathy, Jenny and I were in Miss Welbeloved’s class, the top class in our year. Amazingly, so was Enie Smales, she of the damp knickers, hefty honk and green candles. We couldn’t stand her then. Now, looking back, I realize that I should have felt sorry for her, but I didn’t. She was always creeping around the teachers, telling them that I was on the toilet roof gobbing into the boys’ playground in the hope of hitting one. (I know that was disgusting, but they were always doing it to us. They liked to hear the screaming of girls rushing about trying to avoid being caught in the bombardment.) Or that it was me who wrote ‘Be alert, your country needs lerts’ and ‘Enie Smales stinks’ in blue crayon all over the new whitewash on the PE cupboard walls. In fact, it was me that wrote about lerts and Jenny who wrote about stinky old Smales. Enie even told Miss Welbeloved that I’d snuck in at playtime and written ‘HOT NEWS … Old Welbeloved ain’t!!!’ on the blackboard. I got caned for that but I got my own back and clocked Smales one after school. She told them that as well.
Anyway, it was that year that Jenny started to clunk out at school. She’d be standing there in assembly, or sitting on the bench next to me or charging about like a mad thing in the playground and suddenly she’d keel over and lie so still she could have been dead.
It had been really frightening at first. Then she began to be away for the odd day or two. Now that really was strange, because Jenny would be sent to school no matter what. Her mum couldn’t afford to take time off work, because she didn’t get paid if she did. Jenny’s dad, known to all as ‘Hissing Sid’ on account of the way he spoke in a kind of hiss out of the side of his mouth, hadn’t paid for her upkeep since he’d legged it with some skinny blonde woman called Mary Cowley. Sadly, they hadn’t gone far, and seeing them almost daily made things even harder for Jenny and her mum. Auntie Maggie told Madame Zelda that Mary had told her that Hissing Sid always had to cough up a bit of jewellery whenever they had a row, which was often. No rock, no leg-over, whatever that meant, but it explained why he didn’t trouble about his maintenance payments, or so Auntie Maggie said.
‘Which is a bit rich if you think about how snotty she is about the working girls round here, as if she was any better. For my money, taking jewellery for a bit of the other is prostitution. What else could you call it?’ My auntie Maggie asked the question, and Madame Zelda agreed with her.
I wasn’t supposed to have heard all that, but it cheered Jenny up no end when I reported it back to her. We often saw Mary Cowley in the street, and sometimes we’d hang out of my bedroom window and try and hit her with our pea-shooters. In the end, Auntie Maggie reluctantly put a stop to it when too many innocent bystanders copped it by mistake and complained. Still, we got Mary a few times before we were banned from trying.
We hated that Mary Cowley and took to calling her the Mangy Cow instead. Well, Jenny hated her passionately, and loyalty made me dislike her too. That, and the fact that she once threatened to thrash me to within an inch of my life when a well-aimed spitball landed on her head. Nobody besides teachers and other kids had ever hit me, or even threatened to before, on account of the fact that Auntie Maggie and Uncle Bert didn’t believe in it. Even the school thought twice about clouting me after Auntie Maggie finished telling them their fortune. When Auntie Maggie gave anyone a tongue-lashing they stayed lashed, and were very, very cautious about sticking their heads above the parapet for a second go.
Jenny had been away from school for two whole weeks when Mrs Robbins came to see us one Saturday morning. She hardly ever came to the cafe, except to collect Jenny when she was playing with me and was late for her tea or something. It hadn’t crossed my mind to try and visit Jenny while she’d been away because I had never been inside her flat in all the time I’d known her. We’d never discussed it, but it was somehow understood that going to her place just wasn’t on. The most I’d do was ring the bell and wait for a head to pop out of the window to tell me whether Jenny could or could not come out to play. So you can imagine my surprise when Mrs Robbins came looking for me that day and invited me round to visit Jenny on the Sunday. I looked at her tired, strained face and then at my auntie Maggie’s round, jolly one and saw her nod very slightly; I was to go, no question. Mrs Robbins tried to smile but it was tight and never reached her eyes, unlike Auntie Maggie’s beam which always made her whole face light up and her eyes twinkle like Sugar Plum’s sequins.
‘What time would you like her there, Mrs Robbins?’ Auntie Maggie’s question seemed to stump Mrs Robbins for a minute but she finally said that after dinner would be fine.
‘Is Jenny laid up in bed, then?’ my beloved aunt asked, and when Mrs Robbins nodded she carried on. ‘Well, then, how about I pack up a little picnic and Rosie can bring a few games and stuff and they can make a real afternoon of it. That’ll cheer them both up. Our Rosie’s been hanging about like a wet weekend in Bognor ever since your Jenny’s been poorly, so it’ll be good for ’em both.’
I realize now that the strange look that flashed across Mrs Robbins face was a complicated mixture of gratitude, relief and a sort of strangled pleading that she couldn’t voice. Her eyes filled with tears which she wiped away with an impatient hand. ‘I’d better get back. I’ve left her with my husband and he’s useless at the best of times.’
Auntie Maggie had also seen that complicated look and would have none of it. ‘Well, then, they’ll do all right for a while, I’m sure. Why don’t you come upstairs and have a cup of tea with me? I could do with a bit of a rest and you’re just the excuse I need.’ She didn’t wait for Mrs Robbins’s reply before yelling into the kitchen, ‘Bert, I’m going upstairs for a bit. Keep your eye on things, will you?’
She managed to sweep Mrs Robbins along with her before the poor woman could get a word in edgeways. However, when I went to follow I was told very firmly to stay put and help Uncle Bert. There was no possibility of getting an earful of what they were talking about upstairs. It was much easier to hide behind the door and listen to what was going on in the cafe than it was to do it the other way round, because all anyone had to do was glance down the stairs and they’d see me. I had to wait until Mrs Robbins had left before I got to know anything at all.
It was a good hour before the two women came d
own again. Some of the strain had left Mrs Robbins’s face but my auntie Maggie looked grim behind her kindly smiles as she showed her guest out. I knew the signs. Something Mrs Robbins had told her had made her good and mad, and she was hell bent on doing something about it. Her voice was sharp as she turned to me and told me to nip next door and see if Sharky Finn would be kind enough to pop in at his earliest convenience.
Most solicitors expect you to make an appointment to see them in their offices, I realize that now, but it was never like that when we wanted to see Sharky. Sharky always came to the cafe and it never occurred to anybody to do it any other way. If he came to us, he got free brandy in his coffee and we didn’t have to close the cafe, so everyone was happy.
Sharky Finn was out on his own when it came to lawyers. Uncle Bert always said that Sharky was so bent that he could hide behind a corkscrew, no trouble, but Auntie Maggie said he’d be too busy using it to hide behind it. But they both agreed he was as sharp as anything when it came to the law. Which is just as well, because, as he said himself, most of his clients were as guilty as sin and it was his job to keep them out and about and earning so that they could pay him handsomely for his services.
He was never short of clients. He needed plenty of paying customers, he said, because he had more overheads than most people. He had to run a wife, several children and a mother-in-law that no one round our way had ever seen. He had them tucked away somewhere, no one knew exactly where, although Golders Green was most people’s favourite guess. Madame Zelda started that rumour when she said she’d seen it in the cards, but Auntie Maggie said he’d muttered something about the place once when he was Brahms and Madame Zelda had heard him.
On top of the mysterious family, he had several mistresses, a thirst for brandy that would knock over several very large horses and a gambling habit that would bankrupt a small nation when he lost and keep one when he won. Sharky needed his wits about him to keep everything ticking over and the bulk of his customers out of the nick. The amount of brandy he sunk never seemed to dull those wits either. On top of that, rumour had it that he kept secret files, stashed well away from his office. ‘An insurance policy,’ he once told us, ‘to ensure prompt payment and limited aggravation from my wayward clientele.’