‘That Maureen didn’t strike me as too bright,’ Delia said. ‘Poor thing’s a danger to herself.’ Teddy looked at the floor, as if he was actually capable of shame. She knew it was only fear of getting caught. If she kept away from the subject of what Teddy had done with Maureen that morning, resisted the temptation to drop him in it, he’d owe her. She kept her expression neutral, hiding her pleasure at that thought, as Teddy left his place by the kitchen door to join them at the table.
‘You think the kid might grass us up?’ he said to her.
‘Doubt it. She isn’t too clever, but she knows what’s right. Brave too. Gave that shopwalker a good hard kick so I could get away.’ She turned back to Stella. ‘Did you send for Grayson?’
Maybe the shape in the garden was just something moving in the wind. No use worrying about it.
Stella reached for the teapot. ‘Nah. They caught the girl in the act. There weren’t no doubt about what she was up to, was there?’
Delia remembered Maureen wriggling in the shopwalker’s grip, the hat sticking absurdly out of her waistband. ‘Not as I could see, Stell.’
‘Well then. The way it stands, far as they know she’s on her own. A lawyer like Grayson turning up’ll only make ’em suspicious. Get ’em thinking there’s more to it than meets the eye. Then they’ll look deeper, maybe. We don’t want that.’
Teddy blurted, ‘Surely we got to do something, Stell? Make sure she don’t grass.’
A misjudgement. His sister’s face hardened. ‘You telling me how to run my own gang, Teddy?’
‘I only thought—’
‘You didn’t think nothing,’ Stella snapped. ‘But, bein’ as everyone’s so interested in how I handle things around here, I’ll explain what I’ve done, shall I? I’ve sent Lulu. She can pretend to be the girl’s grannie. Tell her how to go on with the coppers. First offence, ain’t it? Can’t see it going too hard, ’specially if she tells ’em it was only one of them moments of madness. Respectable young woman, not even eighteen yet, desperate after she lost her job at the hairdressers and that. Shame she ain’t prettier. If she could bat her eyes at the judge, she might have got off with probation.’ Stella drained her teacup. ‘I reckon six months reform school. Nine at most. So I says to Lulu, “Let the girl know we’ll be grateful, and we’ll look after her properly when she gets out again.” Grayson’d do more harm than good, in the circumstances.’
‘Course,’ Delia said. She knew Lulu would also make sure Maureen understood the alternatives – would leave her in no doubt about what happened to grasses. Well, it served everyone’s interest to keep the kid right.
‘The only other thing is the stuff Lulu gave the girl to wear. Coat and a headscarf, weren’t it?’
Delia nodded. ‘Rita’s. Whatever that was worth, just take it out of my pay.’
‘No, no, no,’ Stella said. ‘None of this is your fault, Delia. I landed you with the girl, didn’t I? So I’ll look after Rita. It’s only fair. And I’ll pay you for the shift you just did in the bar too. No arguing.’
The figure in the garden, which Delia was sure now was a man, was too small to be either Pete or Tommy. Stella spotted her looking, and said, ‘Well then. That’s that. I got other business now. If you don’t mind.’
Delia stood and turned to go. Teddy caught her arm. ‘Don’t make no arrangements for next Wednesday night, Dee, all right?’
‘Why’s that, Teddy?’
‘Ignore him,’ Stella said.
Delia didn’t know whether she meant Teddy or the man in the garden. She said, ‘I’m going to take a few days off, if you don’t mind Stella. All this with Maureen, it’s upset me.’
‘You do that, Dee,’ Stella replied. ‘Long as you want.’
She went out into the hall. Before she reached the entrance to the bar, someone inside closed the kitchen door. Though she was tempted to sneak back again and listen outside, she didn’t. Whoever was about to come in from the garden, Stella wanted him keeping a secret. Safest to go along with that, because sometimes knowledge gave you power, but it usually brought danger too. And Delia still didn’t know for sure how close she’d come today to being in serious trouble – or, for that matter, whether she really was out of it yet.
On their days off, most of the girls wouldn’t get up until the afternoon. It wasn’t just laziness – hoisting wore you out in ways you didn’t realise: being always in danger, and constantly on your guard like that. They needed to take the rest when they could get it. Many had a regular bloke too, someone to persuade them to stay in bed. Delia had been without that distraction for over a year now, and sleep was no remedy for her exhaustion. Mostly, her dreams left her more drained, not less. She found the waking world a far more soothing environment to inhabit.
At five in the morning she looked out from the window of her flat, over the rooftops of all the sleeping houses. It came back to her then how she’d been afraid last night of the Chisholm kids burning to death – how she had given Little Maggie sixpence to take her brothers to her aunt Jemima’s. There was nothing in it, she thought. She’d just been feeling upset because of Maureen. Nevertheless, she decided to go to Jemima’s paper shop, and take a detour down the Chisolms’ street on the way.
It was still dark when she set off. Already, men in flat caps were out with their horses and carts, going who knew where, to pick up who knew what. Scrap metal, coal, beer. In other parts of London you felt like you were in the city, in the modern world. In the 1960s. Out here in the East End, it was still half-rural. Horseshit on the streets. The only cars you ever saw in Fenfield belonged to visitors from elsewhere, or more recently to local criminals doing well for themselves. Stella was thinking of getting herself a nice sedan. Teddy had passed his test in the army and could drive her around. Maybe she’d make him wear a chauffeur’s uniform. Delia hoped so.
Finding no sign of any fire at the Chisholm house, she stood outside for a few minutes, looking and listening for anything unusual. Doubtless, Albie had wandered home drunk, but it seemed he’d found his way into bed without causing a catastrophe. Delia wasn’t exactly disappointed – she wasn’t a monster. It was just that if the place had burned down her instincts would have been proved right; she’d know the Imps were on her side again, might feel able to trust them once more. She’d made a bad judgement and Maureen was going to be locked up because of it. And the fact that the girl had helped Delia get away left her feeling even worse.
Inside the newsagent’s shop, Delia watched while a paper boy waited for Jemima to fill his delivery bag. He was stunted, underfed. You might have taken him for eight or nine, but he was probably thirteen at least. When Jemima’s back was turned, he nicked a handful of boiled sweets from an open jar and stuffed them in his pocket. Delia looked him right in the eye. He didn’t flinch. As far as this kid was concerned, Delia was free to grass him up. He’d take the consequences if he had to.
Jemima handed over the laden bag of newspapers. The boy hefted them across his shoulder, and wobbled out of the shop, unbalanced by his burden.
‘You shouldn’t leave jars open like that,’ Delia said.
Jemima screwed the lid back on and returned the jar to its shelf. Its label read Lemon Suckers. ‘You saw the size of him,’ she said. ‘Do you think he’d manage the whole round without a few sweets in his pocket?’ She took Delia’s money for a Daily Mirror and a packet of Rothman’s. ‘Anyway, you didn’t half put the wind up Little Margaret last night. Kid turned up at our house with her brothers at half ten. Terrified, she was. What did you tell her?’
‘Nothing. Albie was getting pissed in the Lamplighters, that’s all. I thought they’d be better off with you and Ern.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘They woke us up. He weren’t happy, I can tell you.’
Her husband, Ernie, was a postman, and Jemima always took the early shift at the newsagent’s. Early to bed, early to rise, both of them. Still, Jemima looked pleased to have had her niece and nephews for the night, and Delia would bet Erni
e was too. They had no children of their own. Something not right with one of them.
‘Sorry about that,’ Delia said. Nevertheless, she was glad to hear Little Maggie had done as she’d told her – had not just taken the sixpence and gone home. Even though the Chisholm house had not burned down after all, something was wrong, she was sure.
As it turned out, Delia’s premonition had been right in a general sort of way. Albie hadn’t set his house on fire, hadn’t even gone home, but he had died that night after all. It took a few days before anyone knew about it, and then there were varying accounts of exactly what had happened. The one Delia trusted most came from Jemima, who had been with Maggie when the police came around to break it to her.
Evidently the husband of that woman he’d been groping that night was in the Lamplighters too. Knowing better than to start a brawl in Stella Bilborough’s pub, this husband waited until closing time, then he suggested Albie might want to come back to his house to play cards, pretending he wasn’t much bothered one way or the other about how Albie had been going on with his wife.
Having won unexpectedly large that afternoon, and despite buying rounds for the last four hours, Albie had been unable to run through more than half of his spoils. This must have sat badly with him. He was the sort who preferred to go to bed with his pockets light. His luck had already been stretched thin that day; a few games of three-card brag would surely break it. So they all set off together: the husband, the husband’s two friends and the wife, who continued to drape herself over Albie’s shoulder as they strolled along, the same way she’d been doing all night. He had no idea what was really going on. He found loyalty and jealousy equally incomprehensible, and thought other men were just like himself.
‘We’ll take a shortcut here,’ the husband said, pointing to a gap in the barbed wire fence where someone, a looter or a truanting kid, had once broken through. Beyond lay a stretch of half a dozen bombed-out streets, flattened in the Blitz and still not rebuilt over twenty years later. The place was all open land now, scattered with debris and punctuated by unfallen half-houses – bedroom and parlour wallpaper exposed to public view, like the open interiors of doll’s houses.
Albie wasn’t sure. He could see how, crossing this abandoned territory at night, you would soon be out of the street lights’ glow and stumbling around in total blackness.
‘Looks dangerous.’
‘Nah, I know my way across,’ the husband said. ‘Stick by me, mate. It’ll save us half an hour’s walk.’
The wife realised what was up. Drunk as she was, she knew her husband. She leaned closer to Albie.
‘I shouldn’t go that way if I was you.’ It was meant to be a whisper, but it was loud enough for them all to hear.
Her husband grabbed her by the shoulder to shove her away from Albie. She lost her footing and fell to the ground. He gave her a kick in the back.
‘You keep your mouth shut, slag!’ he hissed.
The husband’s friends had happily joined the scheme to lure Albie to a bombsite and put him in the hospital. That plan had seemed both entertaining and morally righteous. Now things had taken a different turn. Beating a woman was unacceptable, at least in public, and they couldn’t be party to it. So they wandered away and left the other three to sort out their disagreements among themselves.
The wife lay sobbing on the ground. Her husband stood over her, his determination to be revenged draining away rapidly. Albie balled his fists. He wasn’t the sort to go looking for a fight, but he always enjoyed one when it arose in the natural way of things.
‘That weren’t nice,’ he said.
At that, the husband turned and fled through the gap in the barbed wire. Albie ran after him into the moonless dark of the bombsite, drunk and reckless, pursuing the sound of his quarry’s retreating feet, barely able to see where he was going.
This was the husband’s regular shortcut; even with no light he could navigate it with ease. He was soon out the other side and weaving through the backstreets beyond. Meanwhile, the wife had picked herself up from the ground, stopped crying and set off for home. Each had resolved to apologise to the other, forgive the other. Never to do such things again.
So far, the story was more or less reliable, built on testimony. The wife and the husband had told their tales to the police, and later, with other details, to anyone in the Lamp-lighters who might be interested. The rest of it, how Albie Chisholm actually died, was all guesswork, probabilities. He’d been alone in the dark. Nobody could know quite what had happened. The police said it was probably like this: that after ten minutes of stumbling over debris, over bricks, lumps of concrete, broken furniture, over bits and pieces of lives destroyed by the Luftwaffe, Albie lost his enthusiasm for the chase and decided to find his way out of the bombsite. He climbed to the top of a high mound of earth, hoping to see enough from there to map his route back to the lighted streets. Then he turned too sharply, tripped over some half-buried object, and tumbled down the side of the hill. Unluckily for him, his fall was broken by a rusted iron pole. It pierced his chest on the right side, smashed two ribs, slid through his lung and exited his back.
Afterwards he lay there for a couple of days, until a beat constable spotted a couple of stray dogs chewing at the body and chased them off. The copper who broke the news to Maggie Chisholm told her Albie couldn’t have taken long to die. Who knew really, though? No point upsetting a grieving widow with the horrible truth, the hours and hours of suffering.
According to Jemima, there was something else. ‘He told me someone must have found Albie before the police,’ she said. ‘Because the money in his pockets, everything he had left from his winnings that afternoon – it was all gone!’
For the last forty-eight hours, Delia had been feeling dopey. She’d slept some of it, but not much. Mainly, she’d prowled around her flat. Listened to the wireless. Read. For long stretches in a state of shut-down wakefulness she had stared out of the window or at the wall. It made no difference: she saw nothing.
Itchy Pete came to her door with a summons from Stella, and the news about Albie. ‘Funeral’s next week,’ he said. ‘Monday.’
‘What’s happening with Little Maggie and the boys?’
He stood in the doorway, scratching. It made you itch yourself – like when you heard some kid had nits and you’d get to feeling as if you had them crawling about your own hair too. ‘Their ma can’t look after ’em, can she? Not with all her hostessing down Soho. They’ll stay with Ern and Jemima, I reckon.’
So that had worked out all right. The whispering Imps hadn’t misled her. Albie had been destined to get himself in bad trouble that night.
‘Stella need me hoisting again, does she? That what she wants to see me about?’
‘She don’t tell me what she’s thinking,’ Pete said shiftily. ‘All I know’s she sent me to fetch you.’
Delia remembered the person lurking in Stella’s back garden. What was it Teddy had said? Stella had shut him up about it pretty quick.
‘This about next Wednesday night?’
‘Like I said, I dunno.’ Pete scraped his fingernails rapidly up and down his neck just under the left ear, a dog chasing its fleas. The itching always got worse when he was on edge. He did know something. Probably not much, though, and he was loyal; if Stella had instructed him to say nothing, he’d say nothing.
‘I’ll get dressed and be round in twenty minutes.’
She recognised the Jaguar parked outside the Lamplighters, which belonged to Maggie Chisholm’s boss, Finlay. The pub door was locked, so she knocked on the frosted window and Tommy the Spade let her in.
At a table in the bar-room Stella and Finlay were sitting with five of the other girls: Rita Lovage, Jenny Wicks, Mary Baker, Alice Boone and a newish one called Kathy something. With Delia, that made half of Stella’s hoisters.
Finlay was sharp: tall, well-dressed, with Brylcreemed hair, and he wasn’t quite thirty yet. Ten years ago, he’d been a Teddy boy, dancing to Bill H
aley and picking fist fights on the street. Even now he kept knuckledusters and a flick knife in his pockets, spoiling the line of his Saville Row suit.
‘Brought it on himself,’ Stella was saying. Obviously they were discussing Albie Chisholm.
‘Was always going to happen, the way he went on,’ added Rita, a hoister of long standing. Second-best thief in the gang, after Delia.
‘How’s Maggie taking it?’ Delia asked Finlay. She knew he’d be pleased to see Albie out of the way. It must have been an irritation to him, his most useful hostess worrying all the time about her husband and kids – her work suffering because of it. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could solve with a threat or a payoff. Maybe he’d been toying with the idea of having someone tidy Albie away. Maybe he’d been thinking about doing the job himself.
But Finlay was on the cusp of maturity, Delia thought. These days, every time it became necessary to show some of his own muscle, he’d find it a little more distasteful, a little further beneath him. That sort of thing, waving blades around, giving out beatings, was for kids on the way up.
‘Maggie’s upset of course,’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘She’ll get over it.’
He was probably right. And now that Little Maggie and the boys were with their aunt and uncle, they’d be looked after properly. Albie had done everyone a favour.
Stella took control. There was business to discuss, and it had nothing to do with Albie Chisholm. ‘Now, girls. Finlay here’s got some work for you.’
Rita said, ‘What sort of work’s that? You got a commission in mind, Finlay? You want us to pinch you a load of cocktail dresses?’
Some of the other girls cackled at the implication. Finlay was rumoured to have a private interest in female clothing.
‘No. It’s not quite your usual line,’ Finlay replied, ignoring the subtext. ‘I’d like you to meet some people, be entertaining, that’s all.’
Finer Things Page 6