The Corner House

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Theresa Nolan had a daughter in the early hours,’ she stated without preamble. ‘I think just about the whole blinking world went into labour yesterday. Anyroad, there’s business wants doing. I reckon your Bernard’ll be tied up, what with one thing and another.’

  ‘So am I,’ answered Danny. He didn’t fancy bearding any of the lions, not today, not after such a harrowing night.

  ‘Peter Nuttall can man your corner.’ It was a well-known fact that fish-traders went out of their way to stand in for one another whenever necessary, often selling an absent colleague’s wares in preference to their own. The art of fair play had been truly mastered on Ashburner Street. ‘This lot knows as how your Bernard’s a dad, don’t they?’ continued Eva, a crooked thumb pointing towards the fish-sellers.

  Dan nodded resignedly.

  ‘Then get your stall sorted,’ continued the midwife. ‘I’ve jobs to get to, babies as wants visiting. You can say you’re going on an errand for Liz and the kiddy.’

  Danny thrust chilled hands into his pockets. ‘Look, I wasn’t a witness to …’

  ‘To the rapes?’ Eva was not one to bandy words. ‘Nobody said you were a witness. I wasn’t there, neither, but I made bloody sure I met the buggers after Theresa Nolan came to me. Oh aye, they got their membership cards stamped all right, once I got hold of them filthy rotten devils.’ Her nose twitched, then the already thin lips set themselves into a narrow line of fury.

  Danny shuffled about, wondering what the hell to do next. ‘Look, our Bernard went round to see all of them the day after … the day after he saw them attacking her—’

  ‘Then I put me oar in once we knew the lass was pregnant. You don’t have to draw me no pictures, lad. As for the fathers of them three hooligans, they’ll not be surprised that your brother told you what he saw. Main thing is, we’ve to make sure Theresa and her baby’s cared for proper.’

  Danny was flummoxed. It was nothing to do with him. Their Bernard hadn’t been the same since witnessing that terrible sight in the spring of 1939. ‘Our Bernard’s acted like a bloody lunatic ever after,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘First into a burning building, last out. As if he’s trying to make up for not being able to help that night, forever going on about if only he’d arrived a few minutes earlier. Riddled with guilt, he is. And it wasn’t down to him, because he did nowt at all to hurt that poor girl.’

  Eva pulled up the collar of her coat. A bitter wind was promising snow, and she wanted to get out of the cold as soon as possible. ‘If it hadn’t been for me and your Bernard, Theresa Nolan would have starved. I’m not feared of any of them, even if they are rich. Such upstarts still wear underpants like the rest of us, you know. A jeweller, a tanner and a bloody furniture-seller? They’re nowt a pound, Danny Walsh. And while the rapist sons are away fighting for King and flaming country, it’s up to us to deal with them as fathered the three blasted musketeers. Theresa gets the best – that’s the top and bottom of it. If you’re too scared, I’ll go and see the buggers on me own. Call it blackmail, call it what you like, they’ll pay up and shut up, or my name’s not Eva Harris. Only I’d be happier if you came as a witness, like.’

  Danny returned to the market and made his arrangements. Eva Harris, all four feet and ten inches of her, was not an item to be trifled with. She and Bernard had already managed to frighten the living daylights and a lot of money out of three eminent business families. With dragging feet, Danny Walsh forced himself to play his brother’s part. ‘A damned understudy, that’s what I am,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘And all I set out to do this morning was to sell a few pounds of cod and hake. I haven’t even learnt me pigging lines.’

  ‘Did you say summat?’

  Danny eyed Eva. ‘If I did, it wasn’t fit for a lady’s ears.’

  Eva laughed. ‘You should hear the so-called ladies in the throes of labour,’ she told him. ‘They come out with stuff fit to cook a prize-fighter’s cauliflower ears, I can tell you.’

  They sat in the van. ‘Who died?’ Danny asked as casually as possible.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The baby. The little girl you wrapped up like a bag of chips for our Bernard and his Liz. Who was her real mam?’

  Eva shook a tiny fist at him. ‘For goodness’ sake, Danny. I called in at Derby Street early on, and Liz looked a picture of happiness. Does it matter? One human being needs another, and I only—’

  ‘Acted like God.’

  Eva sucked in her cheeks, exhaled slowly. ‘Happen I did and happen somebody needed to. And happen I’ll tell you in time. Well, I might let your Bernard know at some stage. Liz is best in the dark. What she doesn’t know won’t plague her, ’cos she’s got a baby and the baby’s got a mam. The rest we can leave to nature.’

  Danny stared through the windscreen.

  ‘I’m tired,’ moaned Eva. ‘Four births I saw to last night.’

  ‘And one of them births came to nowt.’ What had this woman done with that perfect little body? He mustn’t think about that. ‘So you pinched another kiddy and brought it to us. There’s summat wrong with your way of thinking.’

  ‘That’s just your opinion, Danny Walsh. Now, get a flaming move on, will you? I’m that clemmed, me stomach thinks me throat’s healed over.’

  If only her voice-box would just heal over, the world would be a sight more peaceful. Danny started the engine. The van probably stank of fish, though Danny scarcely noticed. Liz and Bernard had done some of their courting in this very vehicle and, as far as Danny knew, Liz hadn’t complained about the smell then. Women were very strange animals – especially this one here. A diminutive figure, she was probably capable of frightening the skin off a rice pudding and the devil off his horse.

  ‘Will they be stopping on at Derby Street, or moving?’ asked Eva as the van pulled away from the market.

  Danny shrugged, turned the corner. ‘I’ve no idea. Liz is for moving, he’s for staying put.’

  They travelled in silence for a few moments along Deansgate and in the direction of Maurice Chorlton’s jewellery store. Danny, who had managed thus far to stay out of this particular piece of trouble, drove like a dying snail.

  ‘Is there summat wrong with this here van of yours?’

  ‘No.’ Their Bernard had never recovered from the shock he received April ’39. To this day, Danny’s younger brother could not quite explain himself. ‘I can’t say I was frightened,’ Bernard was wont to ruminate, ‘but I was stuck. You know, as if both me feet had got glued to the cobbles.’

  The van drew up outside the jeweller’s. ‘Anyroad,’ continued Bernard inside Danny’s head, ‘they’d very near done with her when I came on the scene.’ Danny Walsh swallowed audibly. ‘They’re all serving now, aren’t they?’ He referred, of course, to the cowardly brutes who had inflicted pain and indignity on Theresa Nolan.

  Eva inclined her head. ‘Lancashire Fusiliers. If they’ve had leave, they’ve kept well out of the road. I hope they get shot and all once they arrive over yonder.’ She jerked her thumb towards where she imagined Europe to be. ‘Castration’d be too bloody good for them. They want a few bits of lead between their ears.’ Since last August, when poor Theresa Nolan had arrived penniless and pregnant at Eva’s door, the midwife had hated four people: Theresa’s father, a bigoted loudmouth, and the sons of three prestigious tradesfolk, who were lower than cockroaches in Eva’s scheme of things. Never one to hide her light under a bushel, Eva had gone forth and created mayhem, making sure that Theresa received regular amounts of money from the relatives of her attackers.

  ‘We’ll not be welcome.’ Danny rubbed a fish-oiled hand down a jacket that had seen better days.

  Eva chuckled. ‘Nay, lad. Maurice Chorlton knows which side his bread is salmon-pasted. He pretends to be a Methodist, which makes him the sort as doesn’t want no scandal.’

  Danny turned off the van’s engine. ‘You know, Eva, I blame Theresa Nolan’s dad and all. She must have told him it was rape.’

  ‘She did. Ev
en her sister pleaded with him, and I’ve never had much time for Ruth Nolan-as-was. But no. Michael Nolan threw Theresa out without a rag to her back or a penny to her name. I wouldn’t care but their Ruth’s wedding was on the hasty side. She chased yon Irish feller till he got her pregnant, then it was up the aisle in a pale blue suit, butter wouldn’t melt. Little Irene turned up six months later, and I can tell you now she was a full-term baby. Mark you, Danny, there’s nowt worse nor a cocksure, two-faced Irish Catholic, and that’s Michael Nolan to a T.’ She patted her hair. ‘Come on, let’s be having you.’

  It was plain from the display in the window that business was not exactly booming. There was a tray of five-quid wedding rings, a few strands of seed pearls and half a dozen watches. The shop’s main area of trade was round the corner where a small, unmarked gate led into a paved, sloping cellar yard. Through a window in the rear of the shop, Maurice Chorlton paid out money and took in valuables. A miser to the core, Maurice was taking full advantage of the war.

  ‘Front or back?’ asked Danny.

  Eva straightened her short spine. ‘There’s nowt second-hand about thee and me, lad. We use the gentlefolk’s entrance.’

  Maurice Chorlton was in grumbling mode. Like a small, plump rodent, he bustled about his shop, making his assistant’s life an absolute misery. He had a bring-me, fetch-me, carry-me policy, which, together with his tendency towards displaying eternal displeasure, wore down his staff with monotonous frequency. Rumour had it that Chorlton changed shop assistants more often than he changed his shirts and socks.

  As the talented designer and manufacturer of his own very exclusive jewellery, he was not pleased about Britain’s eagerness to leap into war. Even though the war had only just begun, the rich could no longer afford good jewellery. Of course, there was some money around, the sort that stayed in banks or went into war bonds, but people were holding on to their cash.

  Maurice pushed a strand of oily hair away from a temple. He had a widening, hairless track that ran from forehead to crown, and he compensated by growing the side hair long, then plastering it over the baldness with hair cream. He glanced at his helper in case she had noticed the movement – where hair was concerned, Maurice was extremely touchy.

  Pauline Chadwick, who had noticed, kept her head down. For two pins, she would tell him where to stuff his job, but Mam wasn’t getting any better. Pauline couldn’t work in a factory, couldn’t do shifts, so she served this miser for six hours each day, and the resulting pittance just about kept the wolf from Pauline’s door. Maurice the Mole was a necessary evil for the time being.

  ‘Get some work done,’ he snapped.

  Pauline smeared a blob of Mansion on a shelf, then attacked the length of wood with a yellow duster.

  The jeweller stood near his front door and stared along Bradshawgate. For the present, he seemed to depend for his living on desperation and crime. In the cellar below the shop, ornate clocks were stashed in the company of Dresden figurines, ornamental screens, paintings and valuable gems set into a variety of precious metals. Some had been sold to him by decent people whose times were suddenly hard; other items … well, it didn’t do to dwell too much. The point was that Maurice was paying money out and taking little in. Come the war’s end, he might be rich, but no-one would want to buy much while hostilities were still ongoing. He was comfortable enough, he supposed. He could afford to sit on his assets and wait, just about, if hostilities didn’t go on into the next decade.

  He swivelled. ‘Put some weight behind the cloth, woman.’

  The woman, a childless widow with a fractious mother, rubbed a little harder. She hated the Mole with a passion too deep to be immediately accessible. In his perennial black suit, he looked just like a burrowing, troublesome animal – alert, greedy, fat, oily, fussy. She finished the shelf and ran a chamois across one of the glass-topped counters. If and when Mam died, Pauline would be out of here like sugar off a shiny shovel.

  ‘I’m just going downstairs,’ said Maurice the Mole.

  ‘Yes, Mr Chorlton, no, Mr Chorlton, three bags full of horse manure, Mr Chorlton,’ she grumbled quietly as he left the room. He would be tunnelling again, she supposed, wandering within his catacombs and counting his assets, those valuable objects acquired by him via other people’s misery and deprivation. Well, he would get what was coming to him, Pauline mused inwardly. Anyone as self-engrossed as Mr Chorlton was bound to receive his comeuppance sooner or later.

  Down in the vaults, Maurice thought about better days when he had worked from dawn to dusk with gold, silver, palladium, rhodium. His mouth almost watered when he thought about gold. He hadn’t laid eyes or hands on a decent amount for ages. The war effort. Everything was blamed on this bloody war. The government hung on to its precious metals like a limpet sticking to the bottom of an old ship. The nearest Maurice had come of late to jewellery manufacture was when mending broken brooch fasteners or resetting loosened stones.

  As he stood near the bench, his hands itched to pick up the tools, while his dark, bulging eyes ached to suffer once more the pleasurable pain caused by sharp bolts of colour emanating from a naturally formed, white, preferably octahedral diamond. Cut, polish, polish again. Set it in platinum or gold, lay it on a pad of blue velvet, display it in his window. Whatever folk thought about him, he didn’t care. As a designer of jewellery, he had no equal outside London.

  Depressed beyond measure, he sank into his work seat. Bench brush, grinders, polishers, jewellers’ rouge and flex shafts lay like a row of idle soldiers mocking a general with no battle to fight. He picked up a ring clamp and a pin vice, wondered whether or when he would ever use them again. Twelve sets of pliers hung on a board alongside hammers and files. It was like looking at a graveyard, a place where humanity’s brief visits to the planet were marked by rows of dead, useless markers.

  Roy. He sat back and thought about the lad. Roy had done his best to stay out of the army, but his sight had been judged adequate for the mowing down of enemy gun-fodder. So he had gone to training camp. Mind, Roy wasn’t much when it came to jewellery. Maurice’s son was happiest when positioned behind a pint glass in the King’s Head.

  He took a gold hunter from his waistcoat, marked the time, glanced over his shoulder before turning the dial of a walk-in safe. Once inside, his spirits lifted. Glorious ornaments fought for space on high, cramped shelves. Flawless pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds nestled beneath thick plate glass, while linen-shrouded paintings stood guard around the walls. He dipped a hand into a box of sovereigns, let their silken surfaces pour through his fingers. ‘To hell with the war effort,’ he mumbled. ‘This lot’s mine, Mr Churchill.’

  Pauline called down the stairwell. ‘Mr Chorlton?’

  He stepped out of the strongroom. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Customers, sir.’

  There was no respect in the ‘sir’. If she didn’t buck up, Mrs Pauline Chadwick could get on her broomstick and bugger off into munitions. A customer? At worst, it could be someone looking for a new watch strap; at best, there just might be a club card to be updated. Many locals paid into the all-the-year-round club as a way of saving towards the bigger of life’s punctuation marks: silver and golden anniversaries, a christening, a special birthday.

  But the more useful type of client came to the back door. At the top of the cellar steps in the rear yard, a bell summoned Mr Chorlton himself. No mere assistant was ever allowed to respond. Maurice asked few questions whenever a grimy, beer-soaked tramp exchanged a silver tea-set for ale money. A person who made no enquiries got told few lies. With a world war on the go, who was going to worry about a few missing sugar bowls?

  ‘Coming,’ he answered eventually. He closed the thick metal door and spun its dial.

  Halfway up the stairs, an odour floated down, causing him to widen, then pinch his nostrils. Fish. He stopped in his tracks. Fish: Bernard Walsh. Bernard Walsh and Eva somebody-or-other, one of those self-appointed busybodies. April. January. About nine months between
those particular markers of time. Fish. Bernard Walsh and Roy Chorlton. Rape.

  Maurice entered the shop. ‘Would you like to run your errands now?’ he asked Pauline.

  She froze for a second, then grabbed her coat from a hook, picked up her purse and scuttered out of the shop.

  Maurice Chorlton shot a bolt home and pulled down the window blind. ‘Well?’

  Eva Harris placed a shopping basket on one of the glass counters. ‘Theresa Nolan survived the birth,’ she announced. ‘Which was a miracle, what with her heart being poor.’ She sniffed, looking the jeweller up and down. ‘It was surprising when she recovered from what your lad and his friends did to her.’

  Chorlton fiddled with his gold albert and fixed his gaze on Danny. He had not dealt with the man before, not with regard to this particular business. ‘Walsh,’ he stated flatly. ‘Brother to the so-called witness, I suppose. I think I’ve seen you on the market – first stall on the left near Ashburner Street.’

  Danny allowed a beat of time to pass. ‘Our Bernard saw what he saw,’ he whispered. ‘No more and no less. He’s not one for making up tales, Mr Chorlton.’

  ‘And neither is Theresa,’ snapped Eva. ‘A more honest young woman I’d defy you to meet. And your Roy was the ringleader, all right.’

  Maurice Chorlton gritted his teeth and waited. When the silence became unbearable, he spoke up. ‘What do you want this time?’

  ‘In case you’re wondering, like,’ said Eva, ‘it’s a little girl. Jessica, she’s to be called. Theresa’s mam was Jessica, God rest her soul. Anyroad, it’s a right bonny little lass. So get your mates round the table and cough up a bit extra for the child’s needs.’

  The jeweller contained himself, just about. He, George Hardin and – sometimes – Alan Betteridge had been coughing up thirty bob a week for months, while their respective sons, the supposed rapists, were playing soldiers somewhere in Cheshire. And now, the blackmailers had arrived to ask for more. ‘How much do you suggest?’ he managed through a rigid jaw.

  ‘Extra pound a week should do it,’ replied Eva.