by Pip Granger
Madame Zelda’s voice asked what the scheme was, exactly.
‘Apparently, the arrangement was that apart from the usual chunk going to the boys in blue, and Cliff’s bit of profit, the rest had to go to Hissing Sid’s cast-off and that poor little mite of a daughter of his. Said they’d make it a fairly regular arrangement until Jenny was out of the woods. Quite right too. That Mary’s a voracious little twat, and I should know. She’s always on the make, that one.’
Which left me wondering what Jenny was doing in the woods when she wasn’t well. Then I wondered what woods they could possibly mean, Soho not being known for its trees. Still, I didn’t like to ask and draw attention to myself, because the conversation was so fascinating that I just knew it’d stop if they realized I was listening.
Finally, the subject turned to the trouble that Paulette was having with the new manager at the Lyon’s Corner House at Marble Arch where she worked as a Nippy. He had a bad case of the desert disease, or wandering palms, if you prefer. A lively discussion followed as to ways and means of getting him to keep his hands to himself. After listening for a bit I got bored and carried on with my treasure hunt while filled with wonder about what clever blokes T.C. and Sharky were. I was glad that Mrs Robbins and Jenny would finally have some money and I was even gladder that they were getting it from Hissing Sid and the Mangy Cow.
In case you were wondering, I did solve all ten clues, and my prize was tiny models of Toady, Ratty, Mole and Badger from The Wind in the Willows, my favourite book. I loved them to bits and still have them, which is a miracle because that night, and for many nights after that, they slept under my pillow and it’s a wonder they weren’t broken. Then it was time for bed. Everyone kissed me goodnight. I was in the middle of The Railway Children at the time and fell asleep to the sound of Bandy’s deep, plummy voice reading it to me. It was remarkably soothing for a woman whose personality certainly wasn’t.
14
Now, when God created the world in general and schools in particular, He laid down, in tablets of stone, that school heating should be switched on on the first of October and off again on the first of May. Blizzards in September, an Indian Summer in November and snow in April changed nothing; the heating went on and off at the official times and nothing and nobody could alter it.
So when, a few days before the official Easter holiday, the ancient boiler at my school finally blew, there was much joy and jubilation. After half an hour spent paddling and freezing, it was decided to close the school. Those who were sure to find a parent at home could leave at once and the rest would have to huddle in the upstairs classrooms with as many electric fires as could be found. Even old Welbeloved could tell that we couldn’t write or even think when our fingers were blue and we were ankle deep in water. I was one of the lucky ones who went home. I fair bounded down the road, brimful of glee. An unexpected day off school was always a treat. The fact that it would run into a fortnight’s holiday made it even better.
T.C. was sitting at the corner table with Uncle Bert and Auntie Maggie as I rushed through the door into the steamy warmth of the cafe. I was mightily surprised when nobody looked delighted to see me, which they usually did. T.C.’s crinkly blue eyes failed to sparkle and Uncle Bert and Auntie Maggie simply looked startled. I’d obviously strayed into a serious and very private conversation and it took them all a moment to take in the fact that I was there.
Auntie Maggie was the first to pull herself together. ‘Rosie, love, what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at school?’ Without waiting for an answer, she whisked me upstairs so I could hang my coat up and change into my slippers and my civvies. School clothes were precious and kept only for school.
Once we were safely out of earshot of Uncle Bert and T.C., I heard the deep rumble of their voices begin again, but not what they said until T.C. roared, ‘He said what?’ He sounded furious, which was really unusual for T.C. who was normally quiet and calm. Earwigging was out of the question on account of Auntie Maggie’s sticking to me like a poultice to a carbuncle. It was a bit annoying because it was clear that something important was going on. My mind shot back to the Widow Ginger and his threats and I was sure that they were talking about him. Half of me felt a stab of fright and the other half felt relieved that T.C. was going to be in the know. There were times when knowing a copper – and possibly being related to one – was a jolly good thing, even round our way, where such a connection would normally be seen as worse than a dose of pox, chicken or otherwise. This was obviously one of those times.
Auntie Maggie looked distracted as she tried to find things for me to do to take my mind off what was going on downstairs. Trouble was, she couldn’t get her own mind off it either, so mine naturally followed. In the end, we gave up trying to play snap and made do with knocking up some early elevenses instead. There’s nothing quite like a biscuit at difficult moments, except perhaps another biscuit. I was beginning to wish I was back at school, baking my front by an electric fire and freezing my bum off at the same time, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. T.C. came into the room and at last I got the twinkly, crinkly smile that I was used to.
Looking hard at him, it wasn’t difficult to see why everyone thought he was my dad. We had the same blond curls, only his were shorter, and our eyes were the exact same shade of blue. Although he wasn’t fat or anything, there was a sturdiness in his build that was mirrored in mine, which was a pity really, because I longed to be tall and willowy and what I was was short and, if not stocky, at least well made. My legs weren’t about to snap in a high wind, let’s put it that way.
‘So, young Rosie, bunking off are you?’ T.C. asked in a voice that was just a shade too hearty. I knew my grown-ups. False heartiness always meant something was up and, whatever it was, it wasn’t good. ‘Have you got plans for her, Maggie, or can you spare her to keep me company? Pat’s at her brother’s for a week and today’s a rest day, so I have it all to myself. How about a trip out to the funfair at Battersea? It’s been a long time since I threw up my dinner on a big dipper. Can you spare her?’
When Auntie Maggie nodded, smiling a funny sort of sad smile that I didn’t understand, T.C. turned back to me. ‘Fancy it, do you?’ What a stupid question. Of course I fancied it. Who in their right mind wouldn’t?
It was the first day we had ever spent together, just T.C. and me, and we had a truly wonderful time. Before we made our way to Battersea we trawled around Hamleys, my favourite shop in all the world. Trouble was, T.C. had been given strict instructions by Auntie Maggie not to spoil me rotten, so I didn’t manage to wheedle any new toys out of him. Still I left him in no doubt about what he could get me for the next three million birthdays and Christmases and he solemnly took notes in his copper’s notebook so that he wouldn’t forget. We had a really good time poking about, though, and trying out the clockwork cars and train sets. But we got thrown out when we tried to race two of the cars and they crashed into the floor manager’s highly polished brogues. Luckily, we didn’t scratch either the cars or the brogues, or we’d have been in even more trouble. I tried to explain that it was all right, T.C. being a copper and all, but the manager showed no interest and anyway T.C. grabbed my hand and yanked me towards the way out before I could mention the word ‘policeman’.
‘I can’t let the villains know I play with toy cars and get thrown out of toy shops, now can I, Rosie? They’d laugh me off the streets and out of the spielers. I’d never get any work done. No, sweetheart, I reckon this one’s our little secret. What do you say?’ So we shook hands on it, and I was struck by how large, firm and comforting his mitt was, and how sparkling with fun his blue eyes were.
Next we had our dinner at Paulette’s Corner House, and when I told T.C. about the manager’s attack of wandering palmitis he took the opportunity to have a little chat. Paulette said afterwards that she didn’t know what T.C. had said but that whatever it was it put the fear of God into Sluggy Weatherall because after that he’d barely even look in her direction, l
et alone touch her. We called him Sluggy because he had fat pale fingers, like peeled slugs. Yuk! No wonder she didn’t want them anywhere near her.
We took the bus to Battersea, and sat on the top deck right at the front so that we could see everything. I loved looking in the windows of the flats above the shops to see what people were up to or at least what sort of wallpaper and curtains they had. We made a game out of counting how many plaster Alsatians we could spot on people’s window sills. I was bouncing up and down and crowing because I’d counted ten and T.C. had only got nine but he was firm. ‘That last one was a Scottie; you can’t have that. It’s nine all.’ And he wouldn’t budge, although I explained that some Alsatians look like Scotties on account of being Alsatians from Scotland. T.C. gave me full marks for inventiveness, but the score stayed at nine all and that was that. The squabble kept us busy all the way to our bus stop.
At last we arrived at the funfair and we enjoyed every second of our time there, despite the air being so cold that our breath was all huffy. We rolled round and round in the looper, a funny caged wheel thing, then we whizzed about on the waltzer and the dodgems until we felt sick. Once we’d settled our tums with an ice cream cone, we screamed up and down on the big dipper and swung so violently backwards and forwards on the gondolas that I felt sure we had to swing right over the bar and drop out on to our heads. Only we didn’t. But we almost did.
I had a go on the rifle range and didn’t hit anything, but T.C. managed to win me an enormous doll with hair and everything. I called her Lita after Lita Rosa, the singer, and she was almost as tall as me. I spent many happy hours messing about with her hair over the years. I loved it, because she had long, straight hair that I could plait, bunch or put up in a bun.
My curls would never do anything like that, because even the tiniest hint of damp in the air would make them spring out of any clips, bows and slides and back into bubbles. It was really annoying, although nobody could quite understand that. They just kept telling me I’d be glad to have my beautiful barnet when I grew up because it would save me a fortune on perms. Huh! Auntie Maggie was always promising that if I ate my crusts like a good girl, or sometimes it was my greens, then my hair would magically straighten. It never did, despite the tons of crusts and acres of greens she conned me into choking down my reluctant gullet. She could be devious could my auntie Maggie, even though she was the most wonderful woman in the world.
Finally, after scoffing the biggest and pinkest candyflosses you ever saw in your life, we made our weary way back to the bus stop. Once again, we managed to nab one of the top front seats, but this time I leaned against T.C. with my thumb in my mouth and just watched the streets go by.
Battersea was foreign territory to me. All I knew about it was the funfair, the dogs’ home and of course the gigantic power station. London’s always been like that, cut in two by the Thames, despite all those bridges that are supposed to make a whole of the two halves. South of the river was almost as alien to me as the moon. There were no familiar landmarks to ease the feeling of strangeness. Streatham, Tooting and Balham might as well be the South Pole to someone from the West End, while a person from Penge would feel at a loss in Soho, Mayfair or Fitzrovia. The language might be the same, but the houses, food and people were different.
Where they had loads of little roads stuffed with terraces of tiny houses and shops built – according to T.C. – around the turn of the century, we had tall, narrow houses that were now mostly flats, built more than a hundred years before that and, in my opinion, much better looking. Ours had interesting details like fancy plasterwork or Dutch gables, whereas theirs were more squat and solid looking. They had little gardens, front and back, and we had window boxes if we were lucky. They had green-grocers’ shops, we had Berwick Street market. They had grocers’ shops with tasteful displays of things like bottles of Camp Coffee, packets of Bird’s Custard Powder and Atora shredded suet. Although we had one of those, too, run by Mrs Williams, mostly we had delicatessens run by the Campaninis and their rivals. The delis filled their windows with mounds of ravioli and spaghetti piled high in bowls and had salamis, hams and strings of garlic hanging from hooks, like weird Christmas decorations. Lumpy packets of coffee beans and bottles of olive oil were dotted about, to complete the picture.
I didn’t see even one Turkish coffee shop, French pâtisserie or newsagent selling Paris Match, The New York Times or anything at all in Chinese, Russian or Arabic on the south side of the river, whereas we had all of those, and more, in the street where I lived. To be fair, round our way only the parks had bright yellow daffodils waving about and purple and yellow crocuses studding the grass, while lots of people in Battersea had their own in their very own little patches. I liked that a lot.
There were still loads of ragged holes in the rows of houses, where Hitler’s bombs had struck. They looked like shattered teeth, spoiling the set, only much worse. Sometimes wallpaper still fluttered like faded flags and stairs ran up walls to nowhere. It was ever so sad. I hated bombsites and so did my auntie Maggie on account of her mum and dad copping a direct hit in the war. She said she knew how many broken hearts went along with those broken houses, and then she’d blub a bit.
T.C. and I talked very little during the journey home. We were happy just to take it all in.
15
Now, if T.C. hadn’t insisted on stopping to talk to Brian the butcher in Poland Street, we would probably have been home long before the fire started.
I was sitting on T.C.’s shoulders and hanging on to his lugs and wondering if T.C. and Brian would ever shut up as I was nearly falling off my perch with exhaustion. I was also heartily sick of staring at the gutted rabbits dangling at my eye level from the striped awning outside Brian’s shop. Their poor dead eyes, drooping whiskers and ears and dull, bloody fur weren’t making me fancy rabbit stew for my tea at all, as Brian probably intended. They were making me fancy cod and chips in a big way. It’s hard to feel snuggly towards a cod, whereas bunnies are an entirely different matter. I blame books for that. Nobody ever wrote a book about a cuddly cod, whereas bunnies in bonnets get everywhere. On and on the men droned as I struggled to keep my eyes turned away from those pathetic little corpses and longed for them to belt up and let me get home.
Unfortunately, I was brought up never to interrupt grown-up talk for anything less important than sudden death, the need to spend a penny or, worse, tuppence, or mortal danger from runaway trains, horses, cars or any kind of armed nutter, but I was getting desperate. So I gave it some thought and discarded death and mortal danger on the grounds that T.C., being a copper, would know I was fibbing, and chose the middle way, the khazi option, happy in the knowledge that T.C. couldn’t prove that I wasn’t about to pee down his neck. I tugged on his lug and whispered discreetly into it. It worked better than I could have dreamed and we were off in seconds, yelling our goodbyes to a surprised Brian as we fair galloped along Poland Street towards Broadwick Street.
Although the stalls were empty in Berwick Street, the gutters were choked with bits of old cabbage, tired carrots and onion skins, waiting to be collected and carted away. One or two tramps rummaged about, looking for the choicer bits before some other bugger got them. The covered stalls looked lonely without the stallholders and the seething mass of customers that usually milled around them, getting in each other’s way and yelling cheerful insults at one another.
We’d got to the tag end of Berwick Street before we smelt smoke. As soon as we turned the corner into Peter Street we saw Maltese Joe standing in the middle of the dark, narrow road, with Betty Potts towering over him in her black evening frock and silver high heels and Mick the Tic, one of his ‘boys’ twitching quietly beside him. All were watching gusts of black smoke belching out of the doorway of one of Maltese Joe’s clubs.
Nobody spoke as we stopped beside the little group. T.C. took in the situation immediately. He lowered me to the ground and gently placed my hand in Betty’s.
‘Look after Rosie
, will you, Betty, and stand well back? Has anyone called the fire brigade?’ Betty nodded, eyes still wide with shock, but she did as she was told, and with a firm grip on my mitt moved back to the opposite pavement. I clutched my precious doll. Smoke was rapidly filling the street. My eyes began to stream and I started to cough. Betty moved us upwind of the billowing doorway as T.C. galvanized Mick and Maltese Joe into action by asking if the upstairs rooms had been cleared.
‘No? We’ll start by leaning on the bells then. Has anyone got a key to that door?’ T.C. waved at the brown door that stood next to the club entrance. A row of bells and name-plates were crammed down one side of the frame. According to the name-plates, nearly all the rooms were let to French teachers or Swedish models, but that was a fib. They were what Auntie Maggie called ‘working girls’ from Rotherham, Slough and Birmingham and had been no nearer to either France or Sweden than Piccadilly Circus. You could tell that when they opened their gobs to order tea and a fry-up at the cafe; they were as English as their fried bread. The only man with rooms there was old Mr Rabinowitz, who was a bow restorer from Russia and hardly spoke at all except when the subjects of bows, violins, cellos, violas and double basses came up, which wasn’t all that often.
Maltese Joe, who still hadn’t said a single word, nodded and started fumbling with an enormous bunch of keys. He looked like a warder from the Scrubs, only shorter and better dressed. He finally found the one he wanted and stuck it in the lock, and before T.C. could stop him he was gone. He’d shot into the doorway yelling that they were ‘his girls’ and that he’d better get them out. We could hear him roaring at the top of his lungs as he thundered up the stairs banging on the doors each side of the tiny landings as he went. ‘Get the hell out of here now! The club’s on fire.’ He yelled it over and over again until he got to the top landing, then he started down again, banging as before.