by Jessie Keane
‘Caught one over in Brooke Road last night,’ said her father as they walked.
Ruby shuddered. The sun was out, but the mention of the bombing raids that seemed to go on every night now made her feel chilled. Last night they’d had to hurry down into the Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden when the siren sounded. The all-clear had come after an hour or so, and they had returned to their beds.
But this morning there was the scent of fire in the air, the smell of destruction. A pall of smoke lingered in the streets, mingling with threads of London smog. Ruby hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after last night’s raid; she’d lain awake listening to the fire engines racing around, imagining people blown apart, crushed, killed. The Darkes had survived, but some had not been so fortunate.
As they crossed the road to the corner shop, they could see all the way down to Brooke Road.
‘Oh God,’ said Ruby, staring.
Smack!
Ruby recoiled. Ted had cuffed her hard around the ear.
‘You don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,’ he snarled.
‘Sorry, Dad, sorry,’ she said, her head ringing from the force of the blow.
But her eyes were fastened on the scene down there. There were still-smouldering fires from the incendiary bombs. There was a crater where once a house had been. Rubble was piled up – chairs, fragments of beds, bricks with scraps of gaily coloured wallpaper still clinging on, drawers, broken bookshelves.
People were picking over the remains. An ambulance driver wearing a tin hat with a white-painted A on the front was pulling something out of a tangle of cables and dirt. It was a young woman’s body, mangled and bloodstained. Two watching women, older women, set up a wailing and shrieking as they saw the body emerge.
‘What the—’ said her father suddenly.
Ruby jumped, flinching. She froze to the pavement. What had she done?
But her father wasn’t raising his fist. He was running forward with his faltering gait, heading for the shop.
Ruby’s heart was thwacking hard against her chest wall. For an instant, she’d been not only sick to see such horrors, but terrified. Anything made her jump, she was such a coward. A loud noise. The bombs falling. A dog barking, a sudden movement, a sudden sound. Anything.
Dad was limping full speed to the door of the shop and now she ran after him. The door was hanging open. She could see the wood had splintered away from the lock. Ted Darke fell inside and so did Ruby. He stopped dead in the centre of his small empire, and Ruby only just managed to avoid cannoning into his back and getting another thick ear for her trouble.
Ted was staring around. Sacks of flour had been kicked all over the floor. All the containers and bags of loose tea were gone. The two precious hams, which had hung so enticingly at the back of the shop above the till, were missing. So was the till itself. Piles of eggs had been upturned and smashed, making a sticky mess all over the floor. Most of the stock had been taken, but some of it had just been vandalized.
On the far wall someone had smeared in black paint: SHOULD HAVE PAID UP.
‘What . . . ?’ Ruby stared at the message. She looked at her father. ‘What does that mean – Should have paid up? What for? Who to?’
Ted was breathing hard, red-faced. He turned, nearly knocking her flat as he went back outside the shop. Bill Harris, the insurance clerk who rented the flat over the shop from Ted, was coming out of the side door on his way to work. Ted caught his arm.
‘D’you know anything about this?’ he demanded.
Bill looked first annoyed and then scared. Ted was a big man, intimidating despite his disability. He looked furious, as if about to inflict damage. The little clerk’s eyes flickered to the smashed door, the wrecked interior.
‘No, Mr Darke. Not a thing.’
But he must have heard something,thought Ruby. She looked back at the wreckage of her father’s shop. No one could do this much damage and not make a noise.
Ted released the man with a flick of the wrist. ‘Is that so?’ he asked, his mouth twisted in a sneer.
‘Yes. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .’The man hurried away.
‘Don’t want to get involved,’ grunted Ted. ‘Little fucker.’
‘What does that mean, Dad?’ asked Ruby. ‘What they wrote on the wall? Paid up what? To who?’
‘Will you shut up for a minute?’ Ted shouted.
Ruby subsided. People were passing in the street, staring at them.
‘This is that bastard Tranter’s doing,’ said her father.
Ruby’s attention sharpened. She knew Tranter. Tranter was a spiv, selling things on the black market and running a gang of boys who struck fear into many of the traders. He was a very influential man in the area.
‘Did he ask you to pay protection money?’ she asked.
Ted’s big beery face came right up to hers and he bawled: ‘Will you shut your filthy black mouth for one second, you cow?’
Ruby cringed. People stepped around them. No one tried to intervene. No one ever did. She stared at the ruined interior of the shop, and could have cried. She’d stacked those shelves, lined up all the products so neatly, made everything shining and clean to tempt the customers. Now all her orderly efforts had been trashed overnight. Tranter had asked Dad for money and he had refused to pay it. And this was the result.
3
‘You should have told me sooner,’ said Charlie that evening, when he got home and Ted poured out the whole woeful tale.
This had been boiling up for a long time. Ted Darke had been leaned on – him and many, many others – to pay Micky Tranter money out of the till.
Ted shook his head, feeling sick with impotent rage. He’d wanted to deal with this himself, but he could see now that it was beyond him. He hated the thought of Tranter having a touch on his living. His own father had started the shop, and he’d carried it on. Times had been hard but he’d kept it going, long after his dad had bought it with a cripplingly hefty loan from the bank; now Ted’s boys were grown up and he felt things ought to be getting easier.
He was hurt by their disinterest in his business. All he had was the girl, and she was nothing, an embarrassment; a painful reminder of life gone wrong. And now Tranter and his mob wanted a cut of his blood, sweat and tears.
Ted despised Tranter; most people did, even though they feared him. Greasy, smarmy bastard, oozing his way about the place with his fedora pulled low over his eyes and his swish camel-hair coat draped over his shoulders, smiling and patting people on the shoulder while his heavies followed him around ready to dole out punishment to anyone who failed to see things his way.
‘I thought he’d leave it,’ said Ted shakily. ‘I refused to pay. I thought he’d back down.’
‘Tranter?’ Charlie shook his head. ‘Not him. Thinks he’s fucking invincible, he does.’
‘He’s wrecked my bloody shop. It’ll be weeks before I can get it open again.’
Charlie stood up and paced around the room. Joe and Ted watched him from the kitchen table. Ruby was upstairs.
‘I ain’t having this,’ said Charlie, and left the room. Joe snatched up his jacket and quickly followed him.
Charlie found Tranter and his boys in the Rag and Staff, and walked straight up to him. Without pausing in his stride, Charlie walloped the spiv straight round the chops.
Tranter’s boys grabbed him instantly. The barman leaned over, anxious, and the punters scattered.
‘Not in here, boys,’ said the barman. ‘Come on. Please.’
Joe stood there, a heaving mound of muscle, and thought that his brother had gone crazy. But he’d back him, because he always did. He pushed forward. Some of Tranter’s boys grabbed him too, and held him still.
‘Go on then, but why not act the big man proper, if that’s what you are?’ Charlie demanded of Tranter. ‘Easy, picking on old men, ain’t it? You did my dad’s shop over, and I’m not having that.’
Micky clutched at his bleeding lip. Blood had splashed do
wn his thirty-shilling Savile Row suit and he looked down at it in disbelief and distaste. Then he looked back at Charlie.
‘You got nerve, doing this,’ he said, very low, his eyes cold. ‘You’re the Darke boy, ain’t you? Ted’s kid?’
Charlie was struggling against the men who held him. ‘You know who I am.’
‘I know you been doing things on my patch without my permission,’ said Tranter.
‘Permission? I don’t need your permission for fuck-all,’ returned Charlie. ‘Listen, you cunt, why not sort this out? Your boys and mine, back of the Palais tomorrow night. Let’s see who’s the real big man, shall we?’
Tranter stared at Charlie, veiling his surprise. So the kid had balls. He’d be wearing them for a neck ornament shortly, but you had to admire his gumption.
‘Let him go,’ he said to his heavies.
They let Charlie go. He stood there, panting, wondering what next. A knife in the guts? He didn’t know. He was a marked man now, he knew that. Curiously, that didn’t make him afraid – all he felt now was excitement. He was fired up, ready for a ruck. Joe was still being restrained, but he was watching, ready to wrestle himself free if he could, and jump whichever way was necessary.
‘Back of the Palais?’ Tranter was smiling a little through the blood. It gave him a shark-like look. He couldn’t believe a small-time chancer like Charlie Darke had been foolish enough to cross him.
Charlie couldn’t believe it himself. The impulse had just come over him and whoosh, there he was, up to his arse in it. As per usual.
‘Back of the Palais it is,’ said Tranter.
4
The following evening, Charlie Darke was out the back of the Palais with his mates and they were ready. Tranter always came here with his hangers-on and his muscle, Charlie knew it. He’d been watching the cunt and he had been brooding over what his dad had told him. He’d seen Tranter about, the smooth bastard, touching people for money because they were scared of him. Well, Charlie wasn’t scared. And tonight he was going to prove it.
‘All right, Joe?’ he asked his younger brother, who was very quiet – quieter than normal, and that was saying something.
‘Yeah. Still think this is fucking stupid though.’
Charlie gave his brother a half-smile. Joe would always err on the side of caution; his first reaction to any new experience was ‘no’ rather than ‘yes’. Really, they couldn’t be less alike. Charlie was impulsive and fiery, Joe so relaxed he was practically horizontal.
They didn’t even look alike. Charlie was tall, thin, quicksilver in his movements and very good-looking with his dark curly hair and arresting blue eyes. Joe was blockish, square, slow-moving, a little dull with his brown eyes and straight dark hair – but he had a certain sensual charm.
‘Shit, here we go,’ muttered Charlie, seeing other shapes coming out now from the back of the big, quiet building.
The clear moonlight glinted on all the bike chains, cudgels and flick knives.
Charlie’s boys formed up closer, Joe and Charlie at the centre front. Charlie’s eyes were searching for Micky Tranter in his expensive hat and coat, but of course he wasn’t there; Tranter rarely did his own dirty work, he was big enough now to pay others to do it for him.
He was making a point, deliberately insulting Charlie. Suddenly, Charlie felt like the small fry he was, kicking against the big boys.
And now here they were, all Tranter’s toughs and the Darke mob, the same mob – Chewy, Ben, Stevie and all the others – who had been following Charlie and his little brother Joe around since their schooldays. The Darke boys were hard nuts, everyone knew that. All through school they had ruled the roost, Charlie flying into rages and cracking heads, Joe giving solid backup. Separately, they were safe, but together they were bloody dangerous, a lethal team. Charlie might be impulsive to the point of actual craziness, but Joe’s more thoughtful demeanour usually kept both of them out of the worst scrapes.
It wasn’t going to keep them out of this one.
Joe didn’t know which way this was going to go. The numbers were fairly even – there were about twenty on each side. But Tranter’s boys were experienced fighters. And although the Darke boys had youth on their side, Joe thought that experience could probably outweigh that.
Suddenly Charlie let out a bellow and all the boys surged forward. Joe followed. There were shouts, yells and a crashing impact as the two gangs converged. Chains swung and knives zipped through the air. Joe pummelled his way through the worst of it, swinging left and right with knuckledusters on one hand and a hammer in the other. There were bodies piling up. He was tripping over one bloke with his head stove in and falling forward, slipping on blood and shit, that was someone’s ear, laid out like a wet fungus right there on the cobbles.
He righted himself, half-charged again, hit some cunt in the stomach and took him out. He’d lost sight of Charlie, but he was there somewhere, Joe could hear him screeching swear words at the top of his voice. Christ, sometimes Charlie even frightened him.
Now the brawl was thinning out. He looked around again for Charlie and he was there, leaping over fallen bodies and barging into the back door of the Palais. Joe followed, quick as he could. He knew Charlie was after Tranter himself, not this lot.
Joe felt a sharp stab of misgiving hit his guts. Charlie wasn’t going to stop now, he was going to have that bastard Tranter. Joe followed, pushing past people who shouted things in his face, he didn’t know what; his blood was up.
He charged into the bar area, and there they were:Tranter and Charlie, facing each other down. Now Tranter didn’t look quite so cocky. He was cringing against the bar, watching Charlie as Charlie advanced on him, an old officer’s dress sword from the Boer shindig held in his right hand.
‘Now hold on,’ Tranter was saying, his face white. There was no greasy shit-eating smile in evidence any more.
Take no prisoners, thought Joe. But Charlie wasn’t really going to do it. Was he?
Joe looked around; there was no one about. No witnesses.
He turned back as the sword swooshed through the air, his mouth opening to say, Hold on, don’t, come on, we’ve won, what’s it matter whether he’s still breathing?
Tranter’s mouth opened too, on a hideous scream. The sword bit into his neck and a pulsing gout of blood sprayed. The silence was sudden as Tranter’s head rolled from his body and fell onto the bar. There it sat, the eyes wide open as if surprised, the severed neck leaking dark blood onto the beer mats.
‘Shit,’ said Joe loudly.
Charlie just stood there, breathing hard, the headless corpse lying at his feet.
Joe forced himself to move. He grabbed Charlie’s arm, grabbed the sword off him, tucked it under his coat. ‘We got to get rid of all this,’ said Joe.
‘Yeah.’ Charlie was staring at the corpse as if hypnotized.
It was Joe who moved first. ‘Come on,’ he said, and bent over the body.
5
‘Sod that for a game,’ said Betsy, throwing the sheet of paper irritably aside.
‘Sod what?’ Ruby asked vaguely.
‘Working in a flaming shell-filling factory to help the war effort. Bevin wants volunteers. One pound eighteen shillings a week for a trainee. No thank you.’
It was late evening. The daylight was sneaking off to the west, and Venus the evening star was winking into life above them. Soon the raids would start again, and terror would descend. Searchlights would strafe the night sky as the antiaircraft guns sought their targets, and the bombs would fall. With any luck they’d live through it, but they might not.
All this played on Ruby’s mind a lot, since she’d seen the carnage in the next street. Dad was already in bed asleep, apparently unworried. But she worried, she really did. Tomorrow they might awake to see daylight once again, and see the big dome of St Paul’s still looming over the smoking city like an unsinkable leviathan; or it might be destroyed, and them with it.
Something had changed in Ruby w
hen she’d seen that young woman being pulled dead from the wreckage of her home. She’d felt all of a sudden that she was older, stronger – strong enough to see Dad for the pitiful wreck he really was. Day by day, a steel-hard core was growing in her. A determination that this would not be her life. It couldn’t be. If she lived through all this, then one day she was going to break free. She just couldn’t think how.
The two young women were sitting out in the backyard of Ruby’s dad’s little two-up-two-down in the East End, its windows taped up in case of bomb blasts. They were kicking their heels against the wall and discussing their prospective futures. They’d been doing this since they were ten years old in school together, and their ambitions still amounted to the same thing: get married. Have a big wedding. Start a family.
Ruby took a glance at the leaflet Betsy had discarded. A smiling woman was depicted there, arms raised against an orange sky, factory chimneys behind her, planes flying overhead. Women of Britain, it said at the bottom of the sheet, Come into the factories.
She could feel her heart sink just looking at it. Fucking Hitler. Life had seemed almost bearable once, but now look – most of the young men had gone off to fight, so that knocked the marriage bit on the head. And the big wedding? Might as well forget that. It would be a dress fashioned from parachute silk and a cake made out of cardboard – if you were lucky.
Still . . . one pound eighteen shillings was far more than she ever got in Dad’s corner shop. There she doled out minuscule rations of butter, bacon and flour to bad-tempered housewives who sneered at her because of the colour of her skin. There she was groped by delivery drivers who thought she would be easy meat because of it. And now there was this new trouble.
That creep Micky Tranter had been demanding money off Dad. He’d trashed the shop. She’d cleaned the mess up and Dad had restocked as best he could. She didn’t know what was going to happen. Would Dad pay up? Would Tranter back off? She hoped that Dad hadn’t told Charlie about it all, because he’d flip and do something stupid, she just knew it.