Paradise Court

by Jenny Oldfield

  Jess held her little leather bag neatly in front of her. ‘Jess Parsons, Hettie Parsons’s sister.’

  Archie Small stopped dead in his tracks. He raised his eyebrows and studied the visitor. ‘You’re not looking for employment, I take it?’ She lacked the sister’s style. Though she was good-looking in a striking, sultry sort of way, he couldn’t imagine her treading the boards for a living like Hettie.

  ‘No, I came on a personal matter.’ Jess coloured up with suppressed irritation. ‘If you’d just let Mr Mills know I’m here.’

  But Archie thrust both hands deep in his pockets and began to circle round her. ‘Personal matter? Connected with Daisy O’Hagan, by any chance?’ He knew they’d arrested Hettie’s simpleton of a brother for the murder. A visit from another sister could only upset the applecart and bring the police poking their noses back in.

  Things had died down nicely, as far as Archie was concerned. He didn’t want questions asked about his relationships with the ladies of the chorus line. They were murky to say the least. Archie exchanged promises of work for favours from the girls; they all lived in the knowledge that he was well in with the manager and could get them kicked out at a moment’s notice. Everyone knew how the system worked, except for Archie’s wife, Clemmie. He didn’t much want to have to face her if the truth came out. Clemmie had a bruising side to her nature. Besides, if the police realized he’d been pestering Daisy, they might drag him in as a fresh suspect. ‘I should let sleeping dogs lie if I was you,’ he advised Jess. ‘Instead of barging in here demanding to see Mr Mills.’

  ‘I ain’t barging in.’ Jess stood her ground. She looked around to see if she could spot a sign on the manager’s door. She set off towards it. ‘I just want to speak to him.’

  Archie stepped smartly in front of her. ‘I don’t really think you do.’ He was wondering what to say to get rid of her when Mr Mills’s door opened and the manager himself came out. Jess tried to side-step. ‘I’m telling you you can’t go in there without an appointment,’ he blustered, catching at her arm.

  ‘Losing your touch, Archie?’ Fred Mills asked with a cool smile. His unbuttoned jacket showed an expanse of starched white shirt and braces. He wore his dark wavy hair slicked back and he ducked his head forward in an insinuating way. Nothing he had to say seemed sincere. ‘How can I help?’ He gestured Jess out of the way into the office, allowing Archie to slip in and close the door after her.

  Inside Mills’s cluttered, poky office, Jess explained her mission. There was a heavy iron safe in one corner, and a stack of light bulbs in cardboard boxes against the wall. A metal shade on the desk lamp cast a small pool of light, leaving much of the room in semi-darkness, since there was no window. More of a cupboard than an office, it was Mills’s domain, reflecting much about his slapdash, penny-pinching way. ‘You know they arrested our brother, Ernie, for Daisy’s murder, Mr Mills. The trial comes up next month, and we all have to do what we can to help get him off.’

  Mills let her speak, but he was already discounting her. No need for Archie to get hot under the collar; he could deal with the girl easily enough. She lacked guile, she just came out with things straight. But if she wanted someone at the Palace to give her another little fact, a tiny piece of evidence to get her brother off, she must look elsewhere. Like Archie, he preferred things the way they were. ‘What can I do, Miss Parsons?’ He expressed concern, but he was half turned away, riffling through papers on his desk.

  Jess heard the other man fight up a cigar, and felt its pungent smoke prick her nostrils. The room was tiny and claustrophobic. ‘I want to know more about that night, Mr Mills; what you found when you checked things through with the police, anything unusual that you couldn’t quite place, either before or after Daisy got killed.’

  Mills glanced up. ‘A proper little Sherlock Holmes, ain’t you? You ain’t thinking of interfering with a prosecution witness, are you, Miss Parsons?’

  Hastily Jess shook her head. ‘Course not Only I thought, since you was the one here inside the place when Ett discovered poor Daisy lying there, that you’d want to help. I ain’t asking you to do nothing wrong, am I?’ She was shocked at the idea. ‘If you was me, you’d want to do your best for Ern, wouldn’t you?’

  Archie came up from behind. ‘Listen, girl, you can’t go asking Mr Mills to tell you more than he already told the coppers. What he told them’s gonna come out at the trial, clear as daylight. If I was you, I’d go on home and talk things through with Ett.’ He paused, drew deep on his cigar and exhaled. ‘Lovely girl, that. What’s she doing with herself these days?’

  Jess’s heart sank. She ignored the lecherous comedian as best she could. ‘For Ernie’s sake, Mr Mills, ain’t there nothing at all that’d help? Who was Daisy hanging round with that week? Who’d want to meet up with her after the show?’

  Mills looked Archie in the eye and grinned. ‘A whole football team, I shouldn’t wonder, Miss Parsons. She was a popular girl. Like I said, I think you should ask your sister. She knew Daisy better than most.’

  ‘I already done that! What do you think, that I’d come over here without talking to Ett?’ Jess’s indignation rose to the surface. In her innocence she’d believed that people at the Palace would want to help them. Now she saw they had reasons for wanting to hide things. She turned on Archie Small. ‘You was one of them!’ she accused. ‘According to Ett, you was one what fancied having a fling with Daisy!’

  The man backed off, then he wheedled. ‘Other way round as a matter of fact. Daisy O’Hagan went after anything wearing trousers, if you want to know. I had to tell her to keep her hands off me; I’m a married man.’ Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. His cigar glowed, then he was masked again by a cloud of blue-grey smoke.

  Jess struggled to choke back her anger. She swung round to face Mills, finding herself sandwiched between them in this muggy, confined space.

  ‘I’d be more careful what I said if I was you,’ Mills said smoothly. ‘It might just backfire in front of a jury, and the family of the dear departed might have to listen to some awkward facts about their darling girl.’ He buttoned his jacket. ‘Now then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a show to put on.’ He pressed by her with an empty smile, then hung on a moment longer by the door. ‘We know how you feel, believe me. I don’t even blame you for having a go. I wish you luck on the day. But if your brother did go all haywire and do the poor girl in, like the coppers say, you ain’t doing no good going round putting people’s backs up, are you?’

  ‘Leave it to the lawyers,’ Archie cut in. ‘They can talk the hind leg off a bleeding donkey and bore everyone to death. With a bit of luck they’ll get a not-guilty verdict for him just so we can all go home!’

  His false cheerfulness disgusted her. ‘We need more than luck!’ She stalked our into the foyer. ‘What we need is the truth!’ Her cheeks burned as she glared at them both. ‘And it seems to me that it’s in short supply around here!’

  Her anger only died away in the cold evening air. When she finally got rid of their grinning, furtive faces from her mind’s eye, she shook with fresh doubt. She feared that she’d done more harm than good again as she went home to confess to Frances that her search for new evidence had led to a dead end, or worse.

  Ever since Ernie’s arrest, Frances had kept herself in touch with the outside world through her meetings and her work. Her nerves were strung out, but she kept up the front of continuing to cope because giving in was not an idea that ever crossed her mind. She wasn’t a crier or a shouter, except over her big split with Duke, when they’d leapt to opposite sides of a giant chasm over the window-smashing at Coopers’. She was a doer. If anything, she worked harder now in the pharmacy, kept herself abreast of preparations for the trial, and attended more meetings.

  Her friend, Rosie, kept a watchful eye on her. ‘Don’t wear yourself out,’ she advised. It was the evening of Jess’s failed mission to the Palace. ‘You have to take care of yourself, Frances, whatever happens.’
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  ‘Oh, I’m never ill, I’m not the type.’ Frances sat in the coffee room at the lecture hall after a talk by the brilliant Elizabeth Garrett Anderson on the need for better health care for women. Rosie had encouraged her to attend. ‘I got the constitution of an ox.’

  Rosie looked doubtful. She was a cheerful, practical woman, perversely enjoying the war effort because her training as a nurse was proving immediately useful. She felt herself moving for ever out of the trap of factory work and marriage. ‘I ain’t never seen an ox look this pale and thin,’ she said. ‘In fact, I got patients with shell-shock at the hospital looking healthier than you.’

  ‘Thanks!’ Frances stirred her coffee.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ Rosie laughed and got up from the table. ‘Speaking of which, I gotta go to work on the night shift. Are you walking that way?’

  Frances looked up at the wall clock. ‘No, I’ll hang on here. I want to speak to Billy about defence witnesses for Ernie. He’s seeing Mr Sewell after a class upstairs.’

  Her companion nodded. ‘Don’t wait too long. It’s late already. And get him to walk you home. It ain’t safe if you leave it too late.’

  ‘Says who?’ Frances appreciated her concern. She smiled warmly.

  ‘Says me. Here’s Billy now. I’ll leave you in his tender care. Look after her, Billy. She’s worn herself out as usual.’ Rosie sailed out, the picture of health.

  Billy took her place at the bare table with a look of concern. ‘You sure you’re all right?’ His heart went out to her. ‘She’s right, you look done in.’

  ‘The next person to tell me that had better watch out,’ she warned. ‘Now, what did Mr Sewell say?’

  Billy discussed the latest tactics; Hettie must be prepared to be called as chief witness for the defence, since they only had Robert’s written statement.

  ‘Will Ern be called to give evidence?’ Frances tried to consider how he would cope.

  ‘It ain’t been decided yet. Mr Sewell ain’t sure about the prosecution line. They could chew Ernie up good and proper. On the other hand, he’s working hard at getting him to remember more about what went on at the stage door. If he can do that, it could help the defence case to hear Ernie give his version. Sewell says we’ll wait and see. He says he’ll discuss it with you if you call into his office.’ Billy delivered all the information without once taking his eyes off her face.

  Frances put on her gloves and got up to go. The wall behind her was fined with red and blue books, a gaslight on the side wall shone its soft light on her face and made a halo of her hair. People passed downstairs and through the entrance hall, hidden from view. Suddenly Billy seized her hand and came to stand close by her. She didn’t react.

  ‘I ain’t got no right,’ he began. One arm was around her shoulder. ‘Tell me I ain’t!’

  ‘That’s right, Billy, you ain’t.’ Gently she tried to extricate herself. She felt a fool. How had she missed the signs of his interest, to be taken so much by surprise now? Was it that she’d given up thinking of herself as a desirable woman? She had one hand against his chest, the other clasped in his at waist level, forming a barrier between them. ‘We mustn’t mix things up. It’ll ruin us!’

  But he felt he’d stepped off the edge of a cliff. He’d trodden this path for a long time; studying Frances, watching her, helping her. He could have gone on for a lifetime; only, as she slid her slim white hand into her glove, his heart had missed its footing and gone tumbling down. He kissed her long and hard.

  Their simplicity went smash. She found she liked his kiss, and he knew she liked it. She couldn’t say it was a mistake and go back to how they were. New knowledge got in the way. Slowly she drew away, searching in his face for what they should do next.

  Billy put his hand to her face and held his palm against it. Not for the first time he told himself that he was forty-three years old; a newspaper vendor with a sick wife, a mother-in-law and a discontented outlook. No catch for someone like Frances. He wanted to turn back the clock ticking overhead, not five minutes, but twenty years. He wanted his time over again.

  Frances reached up and held the hand that stroked her face.

  ‘Would you have me?’ he whispered.

  She nodded. ‘If things were different, yes.’ Her voice was full of longing.

  ‘Will you have me as it is?’

  Her heart jumped at the directness of the question. How many women said ‘yes’ on the spur of despair? ‘No, Billy, how can I?’

  He let his hand drop to his side. ‘Like I said, I ain’t got no right.’

  The caretaker trawled the building for people left gossiping in classrooms. His footsteps approached the coffee room.

  ‘But we’ll be friends,’ Frances said hurriedly, with no experience of the torment involved.

  He nodded. ‘We’ll try.’ He had a better idea of the misery in store behind that harmless phrase.

  She gathered herself and went out into the hallway before him. The caretaker shuffled towards them, ushered them out and locked the door against them.

  Billy walked Frances to the corner of Duke Street as usual. When they parted, exhaustion overtook her. She arrived home at last and met Duke toiling his way up from the cellar, preparing to close down the empty bar. Her father looked at her strained, tragic face and held his arms wide. She sobbed silently against his chest, before they went upstairs to join the others. They sat together until long after midnight, missing Ernie and Robert, dreading the start of the trial.

  Part Three

  SHOULDER TO SHOULDER

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As the winds blew through the trees in Hyde Park and tore off their golden leaves, the Parsons family hoped and prayed for a new lead that would clear Ernie. October turned into November.

  ‘A miracle’s what we need,’ Florrie confided to Dolly Ogden.

  ‘Or for Ernie to remember what did happen that night,’ Annie put in.

  ‘Exactly, a bleeding miracle,’ Florrie insisted. She shook her head and went on wiping glasses at the bar. ‘He always clams up when he gets into a state about something. Always has. You can’t get a word out of him. Duke reckons he just blocks things out, as if they ain’t never happened.’ She was ‘worrying herself to a shadow over him’, as she told Tom on the telephone.

  But Paradise Court as a whole had other events to consider. Tommy turned up one night out of the blue. It was the 5th of November. He strolled down the court, his new jacket collar turned up against the cold wind, whistling and poking his way into the alley at the back of the Duke, where he caught Charlie Ogden in a clinch with Sadie Parsons. He rattled a dustbin lid and watched them spring apart. ‘Ooh, someone’s clicked!’ he crowed, ready to move swiftly on.

  Charlie had been busily impressing his girlfriend with his mastery of the screen kiss. He’d studied it in detail from the projection room at the Gem; you had to draw the girl towards you by the waist, so she leaned her face back, then you craned towards her with heavy-lidded eyes and put your mouth firmly against hers, gently forcing her lips apart. It worked like a dream until Tommy O’Hagan came and interrupted them. ‘Bleeding hell, Tommy!’ he called out, dragging Sadie with him out into the court.

  Tommy turned with a cheeky grin, relaxed and unconcerned, as if he’d just taken a stroll down the park before tea. He had more flesh on his bones and shoes on his feet, besides the new jacket. This one didn’t skim his backside and fail to fasten across the chest like the other. An optimistic streak must have told him that he’d grow into this one eventually, since he was filling out nicely and losing the peaky look of the Barnardo’s posters. ‘Now then, Charlie, is that what they teach you at school nowadays? “Bleeding this and bleeding that”!’

  Charlie approached him warily. ‘Where you been, Tommy?’

  ‘Here and there. Why, did you miss me, then?’ Tommy glanced ahead towards the grim tenements. ‘Blimey, the old place still looks horrible as ever, don’t it?’

  Sadie clutched Charlie’s hand.
‘Ain’t you heard, Tommy?’

  ‘Where I been I ain’t heard nothing, believe me.’ Tommy had taken it into his head to go downriver and look for a ship. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision; things couldn’t be worse at sea than they were at home, he reckoned. He met up with a Norwegian captain and persuaded him to take him on as dogsbody on his fishing boat. They set sail straight away. After five days of throwing up and staggering about the place like a lunatic, he’d found his sea legs. In no time, the oily smell of fish had crept into every pore. All day he cleaned each cog and wheel of the old boat’s engine with filthy rags, and all night they would chug and grind in his dreams. But the food made up for the grimy work, even though everything tasted of engine oil. There was plenty of it at any rate. One short voyage was enough, however, so Tommy inherited the first mate’s jacket during a drunken brawl on their first night ashore, then he hightailed it back upriver.

  With money in his pocket and a determination to make a success of himself before he headed home to Paradise Court, he turned his hand to wheeling and dealing on dry land. He set his sights on a barrow and a pitch outside Waterloo, his old hunting ground. So he befriended a feeble old-timer who had a fruit stall and persuaded him he’d be better off with his feet up by the fire as winter drew on. He offered him cash, of course. The old codger snatched his hand off.

  Now Tommy was part of the early morning scene at Covent Garden, and all day you could hear his raucous shout between the great main archway of Waterloo Station. This evening he’d come home to show off.

  He turned to Charlie. ‘Why’s she got a face on her? Ain’t she pleased to see me?’

  ‘Pleased as punch, Tommy,’ Charlie faltered. He and Sadie fell into step beside him. ‘You going straight on home?’