Josie was on her feet now, and she took Gertie’s arm as she said in a low, soft hiss, ‘Be careful what you say if it is Hubert out there. Remember how things were the last time we saw Da and the lads. It’s not so much Jimmy and Hubert, but I wouldn’t trust Da an inch.’ This wasn’t quite true. She didn’t trust Jimmy any more than she did her father, but now was not the time to go into that.
‘Josie, I’ve felt . . .’ Gertie paused, giving a small embarrassed laugh. ‘I’ve felt someone was watching us since we’ve been back. It started at Mam’s funeral so it could be them, couldn’t it?’
‘If it is, I shall want to know why the lads didn’t go and see Mam at least once, to put her mind at rest that they were all right,’ Josie said grimly. ‘And that’s just the start of it. Where have they been all this time?’ She had been pulling her hair into a ponytail as she spoke, and she now twisted it into a low chignon at the back of her head and secured it with a few pins. ‘Come on.’ She took Gertie’s arm and they walked towards the dressing-room door. ‘Let me do the talking, lass,’ Josie warned, ‘especially if Da and our Jimmy are anywhere near.’ She hadn’t forgotten the fate her father had intended for his youngest daughter, nor his brutality that night in Newcastle. Whatever this meeting was meant to accomplish, it would be for her father’s benefit, that was for sure.
For a moment, after they had opened the door and stepped into the passageway outside, Josie knew a feeling of relief mixed with disappointment. The youth standing with his back to them was far too tall for little Hubert. Her youngest brother had always been undersized and skinny, and although the last five years were bound to have wrought some change, he would now still only be twelve.
And then the lad turned, and a voice in her head said, It is him. And in spite of all she had said to Gertie just moments before, Josie found herself springing forward and taking him in her arms. ‘Hubert!’ she cried. ‘Hubert, I can’t believe it!’ And then Gertie joined them and the three of them were hugging and laughing and crying all at the same time.
It was Hubert who pulled away first, wiping his wet face with the back of his hand as he said, ‘I had to come but I’ve got to be quick. You must listen to me, both of you, but you can’t let on I’ve been here. He’ll kill me if he finds out.’
‘Da?’
‘Da? No, not Da.’
He was as tall as she was, Josie was thinking. And good-looking. ‘Who then?’ she asked, baffled.
‘Patrick Duffy. You remember him? He took me an’ Jimmy in when Da cleared off. He said there’d been some trouble, that you’d put the polis on to Da, an’ on to me an’ Jimmy an’ all, ’cos of the thievin’, you know? So he took us in, looked after us, like.’
She just bet he had. Josie stared at her brother, and when Gertie said, ‘That’s not true! Hubert, it isn’t true,’ she didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘Is it, Josie?’ Hubert’s voice was tremulous. ‘Patrick said you made Da skedaddle, that he signed on a ship leavin’ for Norway or somewhere foreign. He said Mam was part of it, too; that the pair of you had shopped us.’
‘Patrick Duffy and Da came to Vera’s sister Betty’s house in Newcastle and attacked me a couple of weeks after we’d left home.’ The words were slow and painful, and Josie looked hard into her brother’s blue eyes as she spoke. Hubert’s eyes weren’t the cold icy blue of her father’s eyes and Jimmy’s, but warmer, with an almost violet tinge. ‘They wanted to put Gertie on the game, probably me too, but Barney - Betty’s stepson - came home and there was a fight. I only told the police about that, Hubert, I didn’t mention you or Jimmy, and Mam had no part in anything.’
‘Do you swear that, Josie? On Mam’s grave?’ Suddenly the small lad was very evident inside the lanky youth.
‘Aye, I do, but you must have thought Duffy was lying, else you wouldn’t be here now,’ Josie said very quietly.
Hubert nodded, and then grinned. ‘Still the same old Josie, sharp as a knife. But you’re right. Mind, Jimmy thinks the sun shines out of Patrick’s backside, an’ I have to say he don’t knock us about like Da did, an’ he always gives us our fair whack. He’s bin good to us, lass. Credit where credit’s due.’
Josie made no comment. Whatever Patrick Duffy had done he would have done it for his own gain, she had no doubt about that, and she didn’t like to think what the tall, fresh-faced young lad in front of her was involved in. Duffy would taint everything and everyone he came into contact with, he was that type of man. ‘Mam’s last words were about you and Jimmy,’ she said suddenly, reaching out and grasping her brother’s arm. ‘She loved you, Hubert, she did, and she wanted us all to be together again. Look, I’m going to London the morrow with Gertie - you and Jimmy could come with us.’
‘What?’
‘I mean it. You could make a fresh start - I’d help you. You don’t have to stay here with Duffy. He’s rotten, Hubert, through and through. You must see that?’
She watched her brother’s face straighten, and his jaws champed for a moment or two before he said, ‘I told you, Patrick’s bin good to us. In his own way he’s bin right good when no one else cared a penny farthin’. Da cleared off and Mam - well, she might not have shopped us but she wasn’t o’er bothered about me an’ Jimmy, about any of us.’
‘That’s not true, lad. That’s Jimmy talking.’
‘An’ you an’ Gertie were in clover an’ out of it all. Patrick took us in ’cos he was Da’s friend an’ there was no one else. Anyway,’ he paused, rubbing his hand hard across his mouth, ‘him an’ Jimmy are as thick as thieves like I said, an’ Jimmy wouldn’t go anywhere.’
And what Jimmy said and did, Hubert lived by. By making sure of the elder brother, Patrick Duffy had known he had the younger too. Oh, she hated that man. She really hated him. Josie looked into Hubert’s troubled face and tried one more time. ‘Won’t you at least talk to Jimmy about it and see what he thinks? He might like the chance to leave here and try his hand in London. Please, Hubert?’
The lad turned his gaze from her and stared at the floor, and his voice was very low as he said, ‘You don’t understand, lass. Jimmy believes every word Patrick says, an’ he thinks you were the cause of Da leavin’ us an’ all the trouble. He don’t know I’ve come to see you, but I had to. They’re plannin’ to . . .’ He stopped, raising his head but still not looking Josie directly in the face as he said, ‘Patrick knows people, people who’d do anythin’ for a few bob. He’s got a finger in every pie there is; nowt happens here without him knowin’ about it. He knows you’re goin’ tomorrow.’
Josie merely stared at him, but it was Gertie who said shakily, ‘What are you saying, lad?’
‘It’ll be tonight, later, when you go back to Vera’s. He’s already got blokes watchin’ an’ he’s told ’em however long it takes they wait till the time’s right. If you’re walkin’, all to the good; if you’re in a carriage or with someone they see to them an’ all if they have to - whatever’s necessary, Patrick said. But he wants you an’ Gertie alive an’ kickin’.’
‘And you’re saying Jimmy knows about this?’ Josie blinked her eyes as her vision blurred with shock. ‘He’s part of it?’
‘He’s goin’ to be the one who steps out an’ stops you afore you open the door. He’ll make out he’s friendly like, that he wants to talk to you about Mam dyin’, that he’s only just heard.’
‘But . . . but you can’t just kidnap people,’ Gertie stammered. ‘Duffy must know he wouldn’t get away with it. When me an’ Josie didn’t come home Vera’d contact the authorities an’ there’d be a stink.’
Hubert looked at her, and for all his tender years his gaze was pitying. ‘He’d get away with it. I’ve seen--’ And then he stopped abruptly. He wasn’t here to shop anyone or to frighten his sisters any more than he had to. But they were his sisters, his own flesh and blood. He just couldn’t understand their Jimmy over Josie. Jimmy hated her every bit as much as Patrick did, perhaps even more so, and in this - as in more than one or t
wo things lately - his brother gave him the willies. He remembered how Jimmy’s face had changed when he’d pointed out they only had Patrick’s word that she’d blown the whistle on them all. By, fair mental Jimmy’d gone. He’d agreed with Jimmy and Patrick before, that no contact with their mam and Josie was best, but once they’d started talking about all this . . . The thieving and such was part of life and he was good at it, he knew he was, but lately there’d been things that had fair turned his stomach.
He forced his mind away from the mental picture of Jimmy’s boot driving again and again into a man’s face until it was an unrecognisable bloody pulp, and all the while his brother and Patrick and Patrick’s henchmen laughing like a bunch of loonies, and now he repeated, ‘He’d get away with it. He’s got away with a lot worse.’ And he felt the twitch in the side of his jaw that worked his eye and made his mouth rise up at the corner flare into life for a moment before he scrubbed at his face with his hand.
Josie closed her eyes for a moment. There was something in the back of her mind nagging at her. ‘Have you heard from Da at all in the last few years? Has he been in touch with Duffy?’
‘No. No, I told you. Da told Patrick he was signin’ on a ship. That’s one of the reasons Jimmy feels like he does. He thought a bit of Da. Don’t ask me why, ’cos as far as I remember all Da did was knock the hell out of us, but anyway,’ Hubert shrugged, ‘there it is.’
‘Don’t go back tonight, Hubert.’ Josie put out her hands and gripped those of her brother. Her da had been scared of the water. She remembered that now. Why hadn’t she remembered before? But then she’d only been a wee bairn of five or six that warm summer’s night down at the dockside when she’d been begging outside one of the waterfront pubs as usual. Her da and one of his cronies had passed quite close by but she’d melted into the shadows before he’d seen her; his usual greeting on such occasions being a skelp of the lug along with a command to get her backside home, as though he hadn’t ordered her out begging just hours before. The other man had been trying to persuade her da to do something, she couldn’t recall his words or what it had all been about now, but she did remember her da saying, ‘Never. Never, man, an’ I don’t care if it’s easy pickin’s. You’ll not get me on a boat, even one in dock, for love or money. I like me feet on solid ground an’ there’s an end to it.’ Her da had said that.
‘I’ll be all right. No one knows I’m here.’ Hubert had let his hands remain in hers but his voice was determined.
‘Hubert, Da would never have gone off without a word to anyone, and I don’t believe boarding a ship would enter his mind. He didn’t like the water, he was frightened of it.’
‘What’s that got to do with anythin’?’
‘Well, Duffy said Da told him he was signing on a ship.’
‘You’d just put the law on ’em both. Likely he thought he might go down the line an’ it was the lesser of two evils.’
‘He wouldn’t. I just know he wouldn’t.’
‘Josie?’ Gertie put a hand on her sister’s elbow.
‘Don’t you see?’ Josie swung from one puzzled face to the other. ‘Patrick Duffy bought a whole host of alibis for the night he and Da came for me and Gertie, and with Da out of the way there was no one who could prove he’d been in Newcastle. It was my word, that of a twelve-year-old bairn, against a dozen or more folk.’
‘Oh come on, what’re you sayin’?’ Hubert shook his head, his tone openly scornful.
‘Da was the key, don’t you see? The police would accept I know my own da, but someone accompanying him could be more doubtful. And Duffy got hurt that night, burned on his legs and maybe his hands. He would have been mad. You know his temper, Hubert. He’s got a nasty streak.’
Nasty streak? Hubert thought of some of the things he had witnessed in the last few years. Nasty streak described a normal man and the little Irishman wasn’t normal. And those first weeks with Patrick - he had had something wrong with his hands. He hadn’t been able to do much, and he’d been constantly swearing and cursing. ‘You’re sayin’ . . . ?’
‘I’m not sure what I’m saying, but if Duffy did away with Da . . .’ Josie’s eyes moved from Hubert’s face to Gertie’s white one. ‘He could have. He’s capable of it, isn’t he?’
This last question was directed at Hubert, and now the young lad nodded dazedly. ‘Aye. Aye, he’s capable of it all right, but his own mate? An’ why take on me an’ Jimmy?’
‘Guilty conscience?’ No, that wasn’t right, Josie thought. Duffy was without conscience. Oh, she didn’t know all the ins and outs but the more she thought about this, the more certain she was that Duffy knew more than he was letting on about her father’s disappearance. They had always been so sure her da and the lads were together somewhere, and if her da had been alive, that’s what would have happened.
She looked at Hubert and saw his eyes were fixed on her. ‘You’re wrong, Josie. You have to be.’ He swallowed, and then made an impatient movement with his hand as he added, ‘An’ that’s by the by for the minute anyways. I came to put you on your guard. What are you goin’ to do?’
She stared at him, and it was a few seconds before she said, ‘If it’s me and Gertie they’re waiting for, we obviously can’t go back to Vera’s tonight. My . . . my agent was going to take us out to dinner later on so I’ll have to explain the situation to him.’ And at Hubert’s involuntary movement of protest, Josie added, ‘He’s not from these parts, Hubert, and he won’t say a word to anyone if I ask him not to, so there’s no harm in him knowing. Gertie and I will have to book into a hotel or something. Oliver will help with that, and then we’ll go back in daylight to Vera’s. They aren’t going to wait for us for ever, are they?’
‘I shouldn’t think so but they’re scared of Patrick - even Jimmy is, though he’d never admit it. Do you have to go back there at all?’
‘I don’t suppose so.’ Josie’s lips pursed in thought. ‘I could send a message to Vera to pack our things and bring them to us. A note or something.’
‘Be careful what you say.’ There was fear in Hubert’s voice. ‘Don’t mention me or anything like that. If it fell into Patrick’s hands . . .’
‘Oh, Hubert.’ Josie forgot about her own situation as she read the panic in his eyes. ‘If you’re so scared of him, why won’t you come with us? You could, right now. You don’t have to go back to wherever you live. You could be free of Duffy for good.’
‘Jimmy--’
‘Jimmy’s chosen his own road,’ Josie cut in, her voice harsh. ‘And you know it. But you’re different. You’re not like them.’
‘It’s not just Jimmy.’
‘Then what?’
He wished he could unburden himself, really unburden himself to Josie, but he couldn’t. The thing was, no one ever walked away from Patrick, and on the rare occasion someone had been stupid enough to try they’d been found floating face down in the docks sooner or later, mostly sooner. A sudden rush of terror gripped him, and his voice trembled as he said, ‘Nothin’, nothin’, I just can’t, that’s all. Look, I’ve told you now an’ I’ve got to go, all right? I . . . I’m glad you didn’t shop me an’ Jimmy, Josie. I didn’t think you’d do that somehow.’
Josie said again, ‘Oh, Hubert,’ but now in a voice strangled with tears, and the three of them were hugging again, Gertie openly crying, when Michelle Bousquet appeared in the passageway with her ladies from their Living Statue act. The ladies in the tableaux appeared to be almost nude, their bodies heavily covered in lacquer, and always caused a stir with the audience and more than a little collar adjusting and clearing of throats with the male fraternity, so now the effect of these well-proportioned, nubile creatures on Hubert was immobilising. He became transfixed, watching them pass with stunned eyes and an open mouth, and then blushed furiously when Michelle herself - a buxom, sleek-haired Parisian - turned and winked at him before she closed the dressing-room door and they were left alone again.
‘You see what you’re missing by no
t throwing your lot in with Josie?’ Gertie said wickedly, smiling up through her tears at this ‘baby’ brother who was a good eight or nine inches taller than her.
‘They . . . they were . . .’ Hubert’s voice failed him.
‘They weren’t, actually.’ Josie was grinning now, she couldn’t help it. ‘Although it looked like it.’ And then her face straightened as she said, ‘Promise me one thing. Promise me you’ll think about what I’ve said, about you coming to London and staying with me and Gertie. We’re leaving with Oliver Hogarth, my agent, from Central Station at two tomorrow. If you want to come, be there. That’s all you have to do. I’ll sort everything, I promise. I hate the thought of you going back to . . . all that.’
The boy hung his head for a moment, then muttered, ‘It’s no good. You don’t understand.’
‘Promise me you’ll think about it.’
‘Aye, aye all right, I promise.’
He was already backing away from them as he spoke, and the answer had been too quick - they all knew it. What could she do? What could she say that she hadn’t already said? All this time and now he was going to vanish again, but knowing Hubert and Jimmy were with Duffy, and that no one had seen hide nor hair of her da since that time in Newcastle had made everything a hundred times worse. He was only twelve. Twelve! But a streetwise, sharp, old twelve over whom she had no jurisdiction.
‘Hubert!’
Her cry went into empty air. He had already disappeared.
Chapter Eleven
‘And you suspect this man, this Patrick Duffy fellow, is responsible for your father’s disappearance?’
Oliver had been sitting looking at her for the last moments in stupefied silence, so Josie was quite glad he had found his voice at last. She suspected their dinner conversation was not quite along the lines he had expected or desired.
They were seated, along with Gertie, at a very pleasant table in the Bridge Hotel situated in High Street West. The coaching inn had been converted from the eighteenth-century Sunderland residence of the Lambton family and was known for its good food and respectability. Oliver enjoyed the former and felt he needed to emphasise his acquaintance with the latter where his new protégée was concerned. He was well aware of his reputation, and normally it didn’t worry him a jot, but he didn’t want Josie thinking . . . What didn’t he want her thinking? He’d asked himself this several times whilst he’d waited for her to emerge from the stage door of the theatre earlier. That he wanted her in his bed? That he desired far more from her than a mere working relationship? Both were true. But he fancied - no, he knew - that he had to proceed carefully with this particular damsel. She wasn’t like the rest. Most of his set would doubtless laugh their heads off if they knew how he was thinking - Oliver Hogarth, the world’s greatest cynic with regard to affairs of the heart. But nevertheless . . .
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