by Jessie Keane
‘It’ll be fine,’ he assured her, enfolding her in his arms. ‘We’ll go away. We’ll work things out.’
She didn’t see him next day outside the shop, or the next. She started to worry. Was he ill? The day after that, taking the Jelly Roll Morton record he’d lent her as an excuse, she went and knocked at the door over the road. An old woman with a whiskery chin answered, scowling out at her.
Alicia swallowed nervously. ‘Um . . . Mr Bird lent me this record; I’m just returning it to him.’
‘Ain’t you Ted Darke’s wife?’ she asked.
‘That’s right.’ Alicia’s palms felt wet.
‘Seen you in the shop,’ said the woman.
‘Can I . . . is Mr Bird in?’
‘Him and his mates moved out yesterday,’ said the woman. ‘Said they were going to try their luck in Manchester or somewhere like that. Sorry.’
The woman shut the door.
Alicia staggered blindly back home, clutching the record. Ted was out. The boys were with Mum. She went up to the bedroom and with shaking hands put Leroy’s record on the gramophone. Then, crying as she listened to Jelly Roll singing about love, she started planning how she was going to get rid of Leroy’s baby.
24
‘They’re saying they think US Army deserters carried it out,’ said Dad over breakfast as he read the paper.
Charlie was staring disapprovingly at Ruby, who was off her grub, probably fallen out with some boy or other. ‘Eat that up, Rube, for God’s sake. There’s people starving and you’re pushing that damned egg round the plate – it’s driving me mad.’
Charlie and Joe, seated on either side of the breakfast table, had not even exchanged a look when Ted spoke. Both kept their heads down, mopping up egg with thick slices of bread.
‘This mail van robbery,’ their dad went on. ‘Would you bloody believe it? Look at this. The Postmaster General said the system had been in place for thirty years and had worked fine. Well, it ain’t working now, is it? Two hundred thousand pounds gone, and no one knows where.’
Neither Charlie nor Joe looked up. Ted glanced at them both. He knew they were into all sorts. But this?
He wondered.
A month later, two boys were playing on the edge of the flooded sandpit near their home in Dagenham. It was a brilliant summer’s day, the sun glinting dazzlingly off the water so that at first little Toby doubted the evidence of his eyes. He had to blink, and look twice. There was something floating in the water. He yanked a branch down off a tree, and belted his mate Dan with it as he passed by.
‘Oi!’ shouted Dan, laughing.
But Toby had moved on; he was down at the water’s edge, using the branch to haul in the bits of dark cloth he’d spied there. He pulled them out one by one, dripping, from the water.
‘What are they?’ asked Dan curiously, peering over Toby’s shoulder.
There were six of them in total.
Toby’s dad was a postal worker; Toby knew exactly what they were.
‘They’re mail bags,’ he told Dan. ‘You don’t think . . . ?’
Everyone had heard about the mail van robbery, it had been plastered all over the papers and Toby’s dad had joked that he wished he’d thought of it first, he’d have done it himself.
‘There’s a reward for information,’ said Dan excitedly. ‘Thousands of pounds!’
‘I’m gonna take these home and tell Dad,’ said Toby.
Toby’s dad took the mail bags to the police, and when he got back home Toby asked him about the reward. His dad told him that the police would be coming round tomorrow to speak to him about the find. Toby could hardly contain himself, the reward was a fortune.
‘But don’t go getting your hopes up,’ said his dad, settling down with pipe and slippers for the evening. ‘If it leads to an arrest, they might pay out. If not, there’s no chance.’
25
‘So how’s the mutt?’ asked Charlie when he went round to the widow Tranter’s house.
Rachel Tranter looked him straight in the eye.
‘You haven’t been near in over a month. He could be dead and gone, what do you care?’
Charlie was smiling, but underneath he was anxious. This last month since the job had played hell with him. Friends had been hauled in for questioning, and a couple of his boys had been found with a few stolen notes, but the most the Old Bill could get them for was possession. They had been acquitted as receivers. Which came as no surprise to Charlie, because he’d gotten into the jury and made sure of the verdict.
But the police weren’t about to let it go. Charlie had got a bit too lively with a steel pipe and, although the postman was out of hospital now, the driver and the guard were still in a very bad way.
Charlie sensed the Old Bill were still snooping around his territory, trying to see if they could pin this on him. But they couldn’t and he knew it. He was home free. So was Joe and so were the rest of the boys. Nevertheless, these were worrying times. He had to keep his head down.
‘What, you been counting the days, have you? You’ve missed me?’ he asked her.
Rachel didn’t even dignify that with a reply. She led the way into the lean-to, and there the dog was, in a box lined with a tatty old red tartan blanket. When Rachel came in it stared up at her, its big threatening jaws open in a grin, and its stumpy tail started to wag. Then it saw Charlie and emitted a low growl.
‘Well, he’s a good judge of character, I’ll say that for him,’ said Rachel.
‘Ungrateful little sod! I saved the bastard’s neck and this is how he repays me.’ Charlie reached down to pat the dog’s head, and it snapped with its teeth. Charlie fell back. ‘Good God.’
The dog jumped to his feet. He had a peculiar gait, with his left back leg hanging an inch or two in thin air, unused. But he shambled forward three-legged and was eyeing up Charlie in a very unfriendly manner. Rachel grabbed his collar and held him still.
‘I cleaned him up after you brought him round, stitched up the wound with thread and bound it up,’ said Rachel, patting the dog’s head while he strained and snarled at Charlie. ‘I thought I’d come out here one day and find him dead, but he slept for a day or two and then started to want food, and after that he mended. The leg’ll never be right, but it don’t seem to bother him much.’
‘Well, I couldn’t leave the poor bastard just lying in the road, could I?’ But looking at the snarling dog, Charlie now wished he’d done exactly that. Little fucker didn’t know the meaning of the word gratitude.
‘I couldn’t help wondering what you were doing at that hour of the morning, roaring about the roads in a van and running down dogs.’
‘Oh, just this and that.’
‘That was the night that mail van was robbed.’
‘Was it?’
‘Yes, it was.’ As the dog lunged forward again, Rachel said a sharp word and it subsided. She nodded to Charlie. ‘We’d best go back indoors; he’s taken a dislike to you.’
They went back into the house, closing the door on the dog. He scraped at it and whined, but subsided after a little while.
‘Tea?’ offered the widow Tranter.
Charlie looked at her. You couldn’t throw this woman. Hold a gun to her head, chuck a bloody wreck of an animal into her arms . . . she’d take anything and come up smiling and serene. He thought of Betsy with her silly grin and her flighty charm. Then he stared at this one, and thought: One’s a girl, the other’s a woman. That’s the difference.
‘Nah. I want more than tea.’
Suddenly the atmosphere was charged, full of tension.
‘I’ve already told you, Mr Darke . . .’ she started.
‘Shut up and come here.’
She didn’t move. Not that he’d expected her to, anyway. Charlie moved forward until they were nose to nose.
‘All right,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘I’ll come to you, then. OK?’ And he kissed her.
‘Charlie . . .’ She was pushing him away, or trying to.
‘What?’ he asked against her mouth.
‘This is no good.’
‘Feels good to me,’ he said, and it did. He’d wanted this from the first moment he’d set eyes on her, and now here she was, in his arms.
‘You only want this because I was his wife,’ she said, her ginger-brown eyes hard as they held his.
‘No. That ain’t true. All right, it might have been. At first. But not now.’
He was telling the truth. He’d been covetous at first, wanting to possess the woman that Tranter had possessed. To the victor, the spoils. That’s what he’d thought, then. But he’d got to know her, to admire the strength of her. And now . . . now he seriously wanted her. Not in the way he wanted Betsy, to cool off after he’d been doing business, to just let off some steam; he wanted Rachel Tranter in a way he’d never wanted a woman before. He wanted to know her, to feel her lying skin-to-skin with him, to break down that reserve of hers and find out what went on inside her head. He’d never felt that with a woman before, and it startled him.
‘So let your hair down, Rachel Tranter, let me see you,’ he murmured against her lips, touching them with his own, feeling her breath coming a little faster, seeing her pupils dilate with the beginnings of passion.
‘What, no gun this time?’ she asked, with a tiny smile.
‘Do I need it?’
Rachel’s eyes held his. She reached back, unpinned the bun, shook out her hair.
‘No. You don’t,’ she said, and her arms went around his neck as she kissed him back, properly, for the very first time.
‘I suppose you’ll agree to marry me now?’ asked Charlie.
They were lying in her bed upstairs an hour later, naked and twined together like snakes. Rachel propped herself up on Charlie’s chest and stared down at his face.
‘No, I bloody well won’t,’ she said.
‘What?’ Charlie sat up abruptly, dislodging her. He looked back at her with disbelief. He was pretty surprised that had popped out of his mouth at all. He hadn’t intended it to. He’d shocked himself. Didn’t he have Betsy lined up for all that, Betsy with her handy dad in the docks where he wanted to get some of his boys placed, Betsy who was young and fit and likely to churn him out plenty of strong sprogs – unlike Rachel Tranter, who was already thirty if she was a day, well past the kids stage, surely?
Yes. He did.
Yet he’d just said, right off the top of his head, that he wanted Rachel Tranter to become Mrs Charlie Darke. But . . . did he? Did he really?
He stared at her. White silken skin over hot womanly curves, the veil of her hair half-concealing her body, the body he’d got to know with extreme intimacy over the past sixty minutes. Her serious ginger-flecked eyes in her sweet smooth oval face, her mouth kissed into pinkness by his own.
Shit. Yeah, he did.
But . . . she’d reacted like he’d offered her poison. And that hurt.
‘Well, you don’t have to say it like that,’ he shot back.
Rachel lay back and looked at his angry face.
‘I’ve had all that,’ she told him. ‘I’m like that bloody dog downstairs – too old to learn new tricks. I had the marriage things before, remember? Cleaning up after Micky day and night, washing his dirty pants? And then nothing but a fucking beating for my troubles. Listen, Charlie – I like being here on my own. I don’t want kids and I’m too long in the tooth for all that anyway. OK?’
Charlie said nothing.
‘And all the dodgy business. Being afraid of the Bill coming knocking day and night, having to lie through my teeth to cover for him. It’d be the same with you, no good saying it wouldn’t, because it would. And, Charlie . . .’ Her eyes were grave as they held his. Grave and sad. ‘You know how it ended for him? Well, it’s going to end the same for you. And you know what? Call me a coward, if you like, but when it does, I don’t want to be there to see it.’
Charlie flung back the bedclothes.
‘Then I suppose I’d better just go,’ he said, grabbing his long johns and pulling them on with quick, angry movements.
There was nothing more to say.
Charlie left; and he was so angry, so bloody hurt, and he never thought any woman would have the power to hurt him as Rachel Tranter had just done. Out in the street he walked away, head down, uncaring and unseeing, scalded by her rejection and wondering if he was going mad, proposing marriage to a dried-up old stick like her. Just as well she’d turned him down flat. He’d had a lucky escape.
26
‘Joe, can I ask you something?’ asked Betsy.
She’d been very careful to find Joe when he was on his own. She wanted to talk to him about this; she didn’t want to ask Charlie, she didn’t want Charlie thinking she didn’t trust him and getting all indignant about it. There was of course some completely innocent reason for him going round to the widow Tranter’s as much as he did.
Innocent or not, though, Betsy didn’t like it. People had begun to talk. Her mother had mentioned to her that the gossips were saying there was something going on there.
Of course there wasn’t, and Betsy had told her mother so straight away. The widow Tranter was ancient. Charlie wouldn’t bother with her. He had Betsy. But . . . it niggled at her. After all, Betsy herself hadn’t put out since that first time, that one and only time, in the alley. And she knew men had needs, overpowering needs, her mother had told her that. But he couldn’t be doing anything like that with Mrs Tranter. Well, just look at her. Not only old, but ugly.
No, Charlie wouldn’t do anything like that, so there had to be a simple explanation and now, thank goodness, she had tracked down Joe. At last, she could stop her head spinning, stop coming to all sorts of frankly crazy conclusions.
‘You can ask me anything you like,’ said Joe.
Betsy liked Joe; she liked his air of stability. If anything was troubling you, you could go to Joe. Charlie . . . well, Charlie was Charlie. Hotter than Joe, more likely to fly off into a rage. But Charlie was the boss, he was the number one man, and she liked that.
She was already smarting over Ruby, who didn’t seem interested in spending time with her any more. Now Ruby was in tight with Vi, Betsy hardly ever saw her. But she was looking forward to this weekend, when Ruby had – at last – agreed to meet up.
‘I didn’t want to ask Charlie about this,’ she told Joe.
‘About what?’
‘I’m not sure I should even ask you.’
Joe looked at Betsy with a frown. This was – from what Charlie had hinted at in the past – his future sister-in-law. She was a pretty little thing; the sort he would almost have gone for himself. But Charlie had got there first. Charlie always did.
‘Come on, spit it out,’ he said. ‘You might as well, now you’ve started, or I’ll be wondering all day what this is about.’
Betsy paused. Then she blurted: ‘It’s about the widow Tranter.’
‘What about her?’
‘There’s been talk.’
‘Talk? What sort of talk?’
‘About Charlie always being round there.’
So far as Joe knew, Charlie went round to Tranter’s widow to pay her a wedge now and then, that was all. And he’d dumped the injured dog there on the night of the mail van robbery. Which suggested . . . well, all it suggested was that Charlie wasn’t as big a bastard as everyone thought he was. He’d wanted to help the poor suffering animal. It also suggested that he trusted Mrs Tranter to care for it.
‘He looks after her,’ said Joe. ‘Pays her a wedge.’
‘Yeah, but is that all there is to it?’
‘What?’ Now Joe was laughing. ‘What, that old bird, and Charlie? You serious?’
‘She’s not that old,’ said Betsy, embarrassed that Joe thought she was blowing all this up out of nothing. Well, maybe she was. But there was no need for him to laugh at her fears.
‘No, but look at the face on her! Serious, Betsy, what are you worrying about? Don’t be daft. And as for the talk,
there’s always talk. People got nothing better to do than stand around flapping the lip about other people’s private business. Just ignore it.’
So she was supposed to be reassured. But she wasn’t, not really.
And as Joe walked away from her, he was thinking Jesus! The widow Tranter and Charlie? Was that possible?
That night Charlie and Joe were at the pub drinking beer and waiting to meet one of their many contacts who had a load of forged petrol coupons going cheap, along with a truckload of black market nylons and eighteen thousand tins of fruit that had come his way. Stan was a ‘larker’; he’d been to the National Assistance office after nineteen raids claiming he’d been bombed out. Charlie and Joe were taking bets on whether he’d be banged up when he got to twenty, but it was a poor bet.
The city was in chaos, officials were overwhelmed, they couldn’t check everything. Some of them were busy lining their own pockets, making out blank billeting forms and filling them in so they could draw allowances for non-existent people without having to suffer a real live lodger – someone made homeless by the Blitz, or a serviceman – on the premises. Mostly the councils paid out, and shut up.
‘We’ll offload the fruit at one of the wholesale firms,’ said Charlie. ‘Right?’
‘Fine. I had to have a word with Ben.’
‘Oh?’ Charlie glanced at him. Ben was one of his most trusted boys: sound as a pound, he’d always thought.
‘He’s been splashing his cash around. Bought his old lady a fucking fur coat.’
‘He what?’
‘Been looking over new motors too, the tit.’
‘What about Chewy and Stevie?’
‘They’re OK. Keeping their heads down.’
‘You sorted Ben out, though?’
‘It’s sorted.’ Joe sipped his pint. He’d given Ben a good going-over about this. Silly cunt.
Charlie nodded, satisfied. ‘The nylons can go door-to-door.’