Polly put back her head and laughed at him. ‘So now we’re to become a grand furniture store are we, or is it a huge joinery factory you’ve a mind for?’ She clicked her tongue with annoyance. ‘Tush! And where do ye imagine we’d find the capital to expand the business in such a way?’
Benny’s voice took on a sense of urgency as he leaned across her desk, eagerness lighting his young face. ‘Listen to me for a minute Mam. If you’re short of capital, you shouldn’t be wasting it on second hand stuff, or on all these workers you have to employ to deal with old carpets.’ He waved a dismissive hand in the direction of the humming work room. ‘All that expensive labour. Is it worth it? You’d do better lending your money to me. I’m young. I’m the future. With enough capital behind me I could buy a proper shop, in the city centre, and really make my way. All you have to do is back me.’
Polly gaped at him. ‘So now my carpet business is as dead as the dodo is it, and I should give all my money to you? I don’t think so.’
Benny scowled. ‘You’ll do nowt for me, will you?’
‘I’ve done everything for you, ye daft galoot, if only you’d the sense to see it. One minute partnerships, the next a fancy shop. I’m thinking ye should get your feet planted back on this earth with all speed.’ She didn’t mention that the last time he’d had his head in the clouds, he’d mislaid his grandmother who later died, but it was there somehow, in her face as she confronted him.
Benny’s greeny-grey eyes, so like Polly’s own, flashed with anger at his mother’s intransigence. ‘And I reckon its time you came out of the ark, time you listened to someone else’s ideas besides your own.’
Polly was shocked to the core. She was on her feet, fists planted on the desk in front of her as she glared across at him. ‘Will you listen to his divil tongue? I’m old and past it am I? Out of the ark, am I? Haven’t I paid a high enough price for this business in the past?’ She certainly had no intention of giving it up because her son had taken some daft notion into his head to sell furniture from a fancy shop in the centre of the city. She shook a fist in his startled face. ‘Find the money some other way. I’ll not finance your crack-brained schemes. Leave me out of it.’
He was shouting at her in his desperation. ‘Watch me then, and don’t think for one minute that I won’t succeed.’ And with this parting shot he tossed the van keys on to his mother’s desk and strode out of her office, slamming the door behind him.
Benny was tired and in a foul mood as he marched home. He hated quarrelling with his mother in that way. Why had he done it? He knew the reason. Because he was keen to have his own business then he could ask Belinda to marry him. Hadn’t he bragged from the start how he was going to be his own man? What would she think of him if he failed? What chance would he have with her then?
He might’ve agreed to go in with Mam if she’d let him have some say, been a full partner. But no, everything had to be done her way, the way things had always been done. Why couldn’t she understand that he needed to make his mark, not be an underling. He’d no time for starting at the bottom, even if being part of an expanding business like Pride Carpets might win him a bit more credibility with Belinda’s family. He wasn’t totally against the idea, but nobody would listen to his. And he knew why. It was because of Big Flo. The whole family still blamed him for his grandmother’s death, and it mortified him.
His first call as he turned into Pansy street was to Benson’s Corner Shop for more cigarettes. He usually had plenty of fags but he’d finished the packet during that boring delivery run. He was wasted driving a van. If only he could make Mam listen. Benny swaggered out again and strode off, looking about him with the air of a man who knew he was on his way up in spite of an ill-fitting suit and pathetically few quid in his pocket.
Since it was a Saturday he expected Lucy to be at home, perhaps even Belinda as well if the two girls had been to a matinee. They’d have his tea ready for him and a bottle of stout to go with it. Benny rather enjoyed this sort of attention after six years of war and NAAFI food, particularly if he could share it with Belinda.
He’d promised to take her out for a drink tonight, or to the flicks. He could hardly wait to see her again, but then he was always like this before one of their meetings, all tense and sick feeling inside. He wondered if she felt the same when she was waiting to see him. He really must convince her that he was going all the way to the top. It was his only chance. If she thought he was a no-hoper, she’d drop him like a stone.
He found the door locked and the house in darkness. Women, he thought. Completely unreliable. The silent, empty house seemed to echo the awfulness of his day, convincing Benny that not a soul cared. In a fit of pique he took himself off to the Crown on Byrom Street. Here he downed a couple of pints, relating at length his plans for the future to anyone who cared to listen. This cheered him a little and at half past seven he decided the girls must have arrived home by now and be wondering where he was. He liked the idea of Belinda worrying about him but he couldn’t bear to wait any longer, besides he was feeling a bit peckish, ready for his supper.
He was passing the end of Camp Street when a dark figure suddenly lurched out of the shadows. The next minute he was flat on the ground with his nose pressed hard into the pavement.
‘Were you wanting your thumbs cut off?’
Benny tried to speak, to say that he didn’t but couldn’t seem to manage it. His teeth were grinding into the paving stones and an elbow was applying painful pressure on the back of his neck, which was having a disastrous effect on his windpipe. Then he felt his head lifted by a hand grasping a fistful of hair and shaken vigorously from side to side.
‘Is that a no?’
‘Yes,’ he croaked. ‘No. Yes.’ He was growing confused, could feel the wet dribble of blood on his chin and he wondered how many teeth he’d broken.
‘I’m glad to see you’re paying attention,’ The voice was calm, controlled and entirely unfamiliar. Benny had terrible memories of being bullied as a boy and wasn’t taking kindly to this treatment. He’d thought himself past all of that and could feel a terrible rage gathering in his veins.
‘Get your bleedin’ hands off me before ...’
‘Before what? I don’t reckon you’re in any position to make threats, do you?’ The face came down close, the voice hissing in his ear, so soft and melodious it sounded like rushing water. ‘I’m here to ask - nay - to inform you to leave Belinda alone. Right? Lay one finger on her, or try to see her again, and I’ll chop them fingers and thumbs of yours right off, followed by your chattering tongue. Do you understand that, soldier boy?’
Benny might have grunted a response, had he been able. Fury was soaring through his rigid limbs, his vision blurred with a haze of red fury but his position, face down on the hard unyielding pavement with the weight of the man on top left him helpless. If he could just break free he’d paste the floor with the bastard.
‘The message comes from her father. He doesn’t like to be crossed, doesn’t our dad.’ Benny’s head was jerked upwards for one last neck-crunching twist before being smashed down on to the pavement. He never heard the terrible ringing sound it made, as blackness crashed in.
Chapter Nine
Lucy had indeed gone to the Saturday afternoon matinee with Belinda. They didn’t hurry home because they knew that the children were with Doris-next-door, that Polly would still be at the warehouse, trying to cope with a pile of paperwork and worrying over how she should develop the business. For once Benny would be there too, helping with deliveries. Do him good to put in a full day’s work, Lucy thought.
It had started to rain and they were sheltering in a doorway when they saw the shop.
‘Look at this.’ Belinda was staring through the filthy windows. ‘What did this used to be?’
This used to be Netta Abram’s tripe shop. She sold the best pig’s trotters I’ve ever tasted. What a delicacy.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘She died.’ Lucy fil
led her mouth with hot fish cake, spitting bread crumbs as she talked. ‘She was reluctant to go, mind, her only being ninety-eight at the time.’
They were both now peering through the dirt-encrusted glass but someone had painted it on the inside so it was impossible to see in. ‘Wouldn’t this be just the thing for Benny?’ Belinda said.
‘Our Benny? I thought he was looking for summat grander.’ Lucy rubbed at the filthy glass, aghast at the very idea.
Belinda pointed out that the best thing the shop had to recommend it was its position. Situated as it was so close to the Co-op it would never be short of customers, assuming it had something of interest to sell. She sounded optimistic, almost excited. ‘Why not? It’s what he wants, to make furniture. He talks about it often.’
‘Aye, that’s the way he is. All talk. He’d never have the gumption to actually do it.’ Lucy wiped her mouth and looked at Belinda with curiosity. ‘I can’t make you out, a girl from Cherry Crescent going with a chap like our Benny. He’s a bit of a rough diamond, you know. Harmless enough but not the brightest creature on two legs.’
Belinda smiled. ‘Perhaps I find him a refreshing change after the hypocrisy and snobbiness in my own family, not to mention the endless machinations of my father to find me a husband.’
Lucy gave a snort of laughter. ‘Well you’re safe enough there with our Benny. He’d run a mile at sign of a wedding ring.’ She popped a chip in her mouth. ‘What about your own brother? What does he do?’ Lucy had noticed that Belinda rarely spoke of her own family.
‘Ron managed to spend the duration working part time for the post office delivering mail, and the rest feathering his own nest, as you might say.’ Belinda frowned as she wondered, not for the first time, just how he’d managed to evade the call up. ‘He’s in the business with Pops. Bit of a yes man, to be honest, which suits my father down to the ground.
‘And you’re the opposite?’
‘Seems so.’
‘Well, don’t expect our Benny to follow in your father’s footsteps. He couldn’t win an argument, let alone run his own business. Forget it.’
Belinda wasn’t listening. ‘Let’s look inside, for goodness sake. I’m soaked through,’ giving a push that made the door swing open.
‘Hey, what you doing?’ Lucy had exactly twenty minutes to spare, then she must collect the children from Doris-next-door, and she’d promised to peel some potatoes for Polly and Charlie’s supper. Both girls stepped inside and at once put their hands to their noses in disgust.
‘Cats!’
‘Better than dry rot,’ Belinda said, shaking the rain from her mackintosh and hair.
‘It might have that an’ all.’
The room, lit by a single electric light bulb, was not large but adequate for Benny’s purpose, she decided. Belinda pointed out how the work bench could sit under the window, for maximum light. ‘Tools could be hooked along the wall and there would still be enough space to store furniture as it was made.’
‘What does our Benny know about joinering? Nowt.’ Lucy kicked aside bundles of newspapers and other unspeakable rubbish. ‘Besides, it’s filthy.’
Belinda had gone through into a small back kitchen where she found a large stone sink and a small rusted gas cooker. The windows were encrusted with so much grime, hardly any daylight filtered through. She slapped the sink with a delighted grin. ‘Somewhere to make the necessary brew of tea. Basic but definitely promising. It’s perfect.’
That was not the word on Lucy’s tongue.
Upstairs there were, as expected, two sizeable empty rooms. The paint was a nauseous brown and wallpaper hung from damp walls, behind which no doubt lived a multitude of wildlife.
‘No bathroom?’ Belinda enquired, showing her ignorance of this style of property.
‘Oh aye, it’ll be down t’yard. There’s probably a bath next to the lavvy with gold-plated taps.’ Lucy began to giggle and then stopped as she noted the intent expression on her friend’s face. ‘You weren’t thinking of actually living here?’
Belinda hadn’t but it didn’t seem quite appropriate to say so. After all, Lucy’s family lived in a fairly humble back-to-back themselves, if nowhere near as bad as this. Nothing quite so reckless had entered her mind, despite the fact that meal times at Cherry Crescent continued to operate very like a war zone. She tactfully explained how she saw Benny living up here, over his own shop. ‘It could be cleaned, scrubbed out and whitewashed with lime to kill the bugs. Isn’t that what you do?’
Lucy pursed her lips before replying. ‘We don’t have bugs, so I wouldn’t know.’
Belinda looked stricken. ‘Sorry, I didn’t think. It’s just that I’m so thrilled, so excited to have found it. This is the first decent empty shop we’ve seen in months. Like gold they are. It’s too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘It must be,’ Lucy drily commented, feeling bound to point out that her brother might be less enthusiastic.
Belinda was so keen to tell him about it there and then that she rushed Lucy straight back to number 32 Pansy street, only to find the house empty. ‘He would be late today, of all days,’ she moaned, dropping into a chair quite out of breath.
‘He’ll be downing a jar with his mates,’ Lucy agreed, shaking the rain off her coat and putting the kettle on. She’d just get it going then nip next door for those two tearaways. ‘You’ll not clap eyes on him again till closing time.’
‘But the shop could be gone by tomorrow.’
‘That’s his loss, not yours.’
Belinda’s eyes suddenly lit up and she grasped Lucy’s hands. ‘We’ll keep it a secret. You’re right anyway. He’ll be much more enthusiastic once we’ve given the place a thorough clean, and a lick of paint.’
Lucy gaped. ‘We?’ But there was no gainsaying Belinda. Within half and hour she’d found the landlord, beaten him down from a pound to seventeen shillings and sixpence a week rent and paid the first month’s in advance. The deal was done.
‘Won’t Benny be pleased?’ she said.
‘Over the moon,’ Lucy agreed, but with less conviction in her voice.
Polly stood, arms akimbo, and looked pityingly at her son. ‘Ye great daft galoot, you’ll sober up before you sit at my table.’
‘I’m not drunk. I swear I’m not.’
Any defence he might have uttered dissolved under her critical glare and while Charlie hid behind his paper and Sarah Jane stood by giggling, she made him stick his head in the sink while she poured cold water over it. Benny yelled like a banshee but she paid him no need. ‘Hush your wailing. If ye didn’t pour ale down your throat then you wouldn’t get into these scraps, now would you? You’ve only yourself to blame.’
‘Benny tried to protest his innocence, that he’d only had two pints but Polly scrubbed his raw wounds with a loofah daubed with carbolic soap, a mimic of the kind of sympathetic nursing he’d been used to receive from his grandmother.
‘Hush, ye big babby. Isn’t Belinda upstairs with our Lucy putting young Sean to bed. Do you want her to find you the worse for wear?’
This sobered him somewhat and Benny began anxiously worrying over whether or not he should tell Belinda that it’d been her own brother Ron who’d done him over. He worried whether Ron was, at this very moment, watching number 32, knowing Belinda was here and would set on him again the minute he stepped out the door.
Yet why the hell should he give her up? He liked her. Loved her in fact. Belinda was special. He couldn’t risk losing her. Surely it was not beyond the bounds of possibility for him to keep her in the manner to which she was accustomed. It worried him a bit how he might manage such an enormous task since his mam was proving so uncooperative and he still hadn’t found the right sort of premises, but he was determined to hold on to his dreams. Mebbe Polly would reconsider her offer if she knew he was seriously contemplating matrimony. Or was he rushing it a bit? Would Belinda be more likely to accept a proposal if he got a business going first? It was so much more difficult in real
life to think and plan than it was in the army, where all decisions were made for you.
When Belinda came downstairs with Lucy, Benny was washed, shaved and changed into a clean shirt even if there were still signs of bruising around his nose and mouth. Painful bruising as it turned out, that would put paid to any kissing and canoodling this evening. Benny expected her to lay into him for getting himself into a punch-up but to his great surprise she ran to him and threw her arms about his neck. ‘Benny, how lovely to see you.’
He winced slightly as she planted a hearty kiss on his cheek, but was thankful that she made no mention of the bruises. ‘By heck, its good to see someone who cares,’ he said, preening himself with pleasure at her fervour.
She didn’t scold him for looking like a prize fighter, or even complain about the stink of beer on his breath which she usually hated. He was so relieved to be let off the hook that he never noticed she didn’t tell him where she’d been either. Both girls were acting a bit daft and giggly but he put that down to normal behaviour following an afternoon out together at the flicks. It was quite plain he had her eating out of his hand, so her brother could go hang. No bully boy was going to make him give up his lovely girl.
Hubert was late for the auction so had to stand at the back, which he hated. Today it was largely second hand goods which were going under the hammer. He preferred bankrupt stock, new and modern, but he wasn’t too fussy, so long as he got what he wanted at the price he was prepared to pay. He and his cronies had come to their usual agreement before the auctioneer had even lifted his gavel. None of the dealers present believed in pushing up prices unnecessarily, certainly not Hubert.
Polly's War Page 11