Coronation Summer

by Margaret Pemberton

  This decision made, the next had been obvious. He wouldn’t wreck The 21 on its opening night, thereby causing Jack irreparable damage. Instead he’d wreck it before it opened, causing just enough damage to make Jack realize that his life would be easier if he toed the line a little. That way no one would be hurt, no punters would be involved and, in the aftermath, an accommodation satisfactory to both him and Jack would, no doubt, be reached.

  The first indication that things weren’t going to go quite as planned came when Ginger said tersely, ‘The bleedin’ door’s off the latch! Robson must be in there!’

  ‘Robson’s safely stashed in his boxing gym doin’ ’is nut ’cos one of ’is fighters, a new guy, is nowhere to be found,’ Jemmy said flatly.

  Archie rocked back on his heels, looking up at the second floor windows. A chink of light was clearly visible where the drawn curtains were not completely pulled together. Someone was up there, but it wasn’t Robson. He’d seen Robson go into The Embassy with his own eyes and Robson couldn’t have left it and driven into the West End, arriving before them. Not unless he had wings on his car instead of wheels.

  ‘It’ll be a cleaner,’ he said, judiciously letting Ginger enter the building first. ‘Lock her in a lav, Ginge, so she can’t phone the rozzers.’

  As Ginger and Arnie raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, Mavis came flying down them.

  ‘Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?’ she demanded, coming to a sudden halt, her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. ‘We don’t open till tomorrer, as if you didn’t know!’

  With their way so unexpectedly barred, Ginger and Arnie came to an abrupt halt. Archie, too corpulent to be nimble, careened into the back of them. Pongo and Jemmy, bringing up the rear, steadied themselves on the hand-rail that ran up the side of the left-hand wall.

  ‘Some bleedin’ cleaner!’ Jemmy said, eyeing Mavis’s sheer-stockinged legs and perilously high-heeled shoes.

  ‘What the bugger are you waiting for?’ Archie demanded, regaining his balance and furious at having his dignity jeopardized. ‘Lock her in the lav and get on with the job!’

  Only then did Mavis realize that they weren’t looking for Jack, but that they were out on a wrecking spree. ‘Oh no you bloody well don’t!’ Bracing her hands on the walls either side of the stairs to give herself extra leverage, she kicked out at Ginger, hoping that by sending him flying backwards he would take the others down the stairs with him, like skittles.

  It was a manoeuvre that, if it hadn’t been for Arnie, would very likely have succeeded. As Ginger yelled and ducked to avoid the force of Mavis’s stiletto-heeled foot, Arnie leapt forward, whipping Mavis’s other leg from beneath her, twisting her over as she fell and doubling her arms up high behind her back.

  Ginger, aware he’d come within a whisker of losing an eye, scrambled past the two of them. Stiletto-heeled shoes! They were more dangerous than bleedin’ flick-knives!

  ‘Lock her in the bloody lav!’ Archie yelled again as Mavis struggled like a wild-cat against Arnie’s overpowering strength, biting and spitting and kicking and hurling non-stop blasphemous abuse at the lot of them as she did so.

  Arnie wasn’t in the habit of taking shit from anyone, and especially not from a woman. With a violent wrench that had Pongo goggle-eyed with disbelief, he wrenched one of Mavis’s arms out of its socket.

  The pain was so severe Mavis couldn’t even scream. With a deep, gasping moan, her knees buckled. ‘Fucking bastard!’ she whispered as Arnie began brutally manhandling her up the stairs and into the club’s tiny entrance foyer. ‘Bloody fucking ball-less bastard!’

  Archie paused at the top of the stairs in order to regain his breath and brush a few specks of carpet dust from his trouser-legs. ‘Put her where she can’t do any more bloody damage!’ he said irately and then, mindful of Mavis’s identity and of her rumoured relationship with Jack Robson, ‘and no funny business with her. Get your arse back out here and give Ginger and Pongo and Jemmy a hand.’

  After what he’d just seen, Pongo didn’t much relish the thought of Arnie giving him a hand in any shape, way or form. He couldn’t, however, say so. Not now. Not with Archie rattled and everyone’s nerves set on edge.

  With all zest for the task lost, he followed Ginger and Jemmy into The 21’s main drinking and gaming room, hoping Arnie would heed Archie’s words and that Jack Robson’s gutsy fancy-piece wouldn’t have to take any more punishment at Arnie’s hands.

  As she heard the sound of mirrors being smashed and furniture wrecked, tears of anger, frustration and pain spilled down Mavis’s face. Archie’s mindless loons were wrecking her and Jack’s beautiful club! How could she have been so stupid as to have left the door off the lock? How could she, when she had first seen Archie step out of the Humber and on to the pavement, not immediately have guessed his intentions and phoned for the police – and for Jack.

  Pain screamed through her as Arnie slammed her against the mirrored wall in the ladies’ powder-room. Jack. Jack would beat the living hell out of this mountainous cretin once he caught up with him.

  ‘Bitch!’ Arnie said, reaching for a drinking glass that had been thoughtfully provided for customers in a rack above the wash-basins, ‘Ball-breaking tart and tramp!’

  Over and above the physical pain Arnie had already inflicted on her, and the emotional pain of hearing the club being trashed to smithereens, Mavis faced a new horror. This good-looking loon now grinning so gloatingly at her wasn’t an average run-of-the-mill villain. He was a basket-case. The kind of basket-case who gained pleasure from inflicting pain on women. As he smashed the glass into jagged shards on the porcelain and she read the intent in his eyes, she knew she was facing her worst nightmare. ‘Not my face!’ Her voice was hoarse, the pain in her chest where he had punched her with a bunched fist making it nearly impossible for her to breath. ‘Sweet Christ! Not my face!’

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was Danny who answered the telephone just after eleven o’clock in Jack’s cubby-hole of an office at The Embassy, to be informed tersely by an unidentified caller that ‘it might be best if someone gets down to The 21 as the blonde bint that was in there when Archie done it over is a bit hurt.’

  Pongo didn’t stay on the line long enough to be questioned and, even if he had done, Danny didn’t need any more information. Slamming the receiver back on its rest he hared out of the office, yelling, ‘Jack! Jack! Archie’s boys have wrecked the club and Mavis was in it and is ’urt!’

  When Beryl walked into the gym ten minutes later, hopeful of finding that Zac had at last turned up there and hopeful, also, that when he left he would suggest she left with him so that she wouldn’t have to walk alone in the dark up Magnolia Hill, she found it empty save for a young man shoving a towel into a locker.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ she asked, bewildered. The gym rarely closed its doors before eleven-thirty at night, for both Jack and her Uncle Danny were night-birds.

  The young man reddened. He’d only been coming to the gym for a few weeks but, as she called in there so often, her uncle being the manager, he knew her well by sight. He didn’t think she knew him, though. He wasn’t the sort of bloke girls noticed. ‘There’s a bit of a panic on, I think,’ he said hesitantly, not quite sure what the panic had been and even if he should be talking about it. ‘Your uncle took a phone message. Something about a chap called Archie and a club and someone in it having been hurt. Mr Robson was out of here in three seconds flat, and your uncle and Big Jumbo and a couple of the other boxers who were still here, went with them.’ He didn’t add that no one had asked him to go with them, and that no one ever did, rather hoping that she’d think he’d been left in charge of the gym.

  Where he was concerned, Beryl didn’t think anything. Disappointment settled inside her like lead. The name Archie meant absolutely nothing to her and, her mother not having told her an iota about The 21, neither did the young man’s mention of a club.

  ‘Did Zac go with
them?’ she asked, focusing on her one and only concern.

  He reddened even further. There’d been a lot of angry words from Beryl’s uncle that evening on the subject of Zac Hemingway. He hadn’t shown for training and no one knew where the hell he was. ‘No,’ he said, knowing he was blushing and hating himself for it. ‘Zac Hemingway hasn’t been in the gym at all today.’

  Beryl was too much of an innocent to be able to prevent the disappointment she was feeling from showing on her face. Presuming it was because she hadn’t found her uncle in the gym, the young man said awkwardly, ‘Were you hoping your uncle would walk you home up Magnolia Hill, because if you like I’ll—’

  Beryl shook her head, cutting his suggestion off even before he had finished making it. She didn’t want to walk in the dark up Magnolia Hill with him. She didn’t want to be walked home by anyone other than Zac. ‘No. Thanks all the same. Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said miserably, wondering why he never seemed to make any headway with girls. ‘If I’m still here when your uncle gets back I’ll tell him you called by.’

  With her hands plunged deep in her coat pockets, Beryl walked desultorily out of the gym and down the creaking flight of uncarpeted stairs. Where was Zac? Where, come to that, was Billy and their Aunt Carrie? Daisy had been looking for Billy ever since tea-time. Though she hadn’t said so to Beryl, Beryl was pretty sure that the two of them had had a quarrel and that Daisy was wanting to make it up. As for where her Aunt Carrie was, that was an even bigger mystery.

  ‘She hasn’t left a note,’ Rose had said when she came round to number sixteen earlier in the evening, looking for her, ‘and as Dad doesn’t have a clue where she’s got to, I thought your mum might know.’

  Mavis, however, hadn’t been home and, as this was quite a common occurrence, neither she nor Rose thought it odd or gave the matter a second thought. Now, to add to all these little mysteries, there was the mystery of where Jack and her Uncle Danny had hurried off to in such haste.

  She trudged up Magnolia Hill towards the lamplit square, assuming it would have been to another boxing club, perhaps a club in Bermondsey or Deptford, or even one north of the river. Only when she entered the square did it occur to her to wonder as to the identity of the person who had been hurt. Whoever it was, it was obvious Jack and Danny knew them well, or they wouldn’t have been so concerned. There wasn’t much likelihood she would know them, though, and blissfully ignorant as to how very, very wrong this assumption would prove to be, she turned in at her gate, wondering if her mum were home from wherever she’d been gallivanting and if, perhaps, the kettle would be on so that they could share a cosy cup of tea.

  *

  Four hours later the shrill ringing of their telephone abruptly woke Ruth and Bob Giles.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Bob said heavily, fumbling in the dark for the switch on his table-lamp, ‘it’s bound to be bad news. News always is when it comes at this time of the morning.’

  The lamp clicked on, filling the room with soft light, and Ruth pushed herself up against the pillows, blinking at the clock. It was five minutes after three. ‘You weren’t expecting to hear of a death, love, were you?’ she asked as Bob swung his legs out of bed and reached for his dressing-gown.

  He shook his head. At the present moment he didn’t, mercifully, have any terminally ill parishioners. ‘There may have been an accident,’ he said, walking swiftly towards the bedroom door, adding hopefully, ‘or it may be a wrong number.’

  As he hurried downstairs to silence the ominous ringing, Ruth lay for a moment, debating whether it was worth trying to get back to sleep or whether she should instead go down to the kitchen to make a pot of tea.

  The tone of Bob’s voice in the seconds after he lifted up the telephone receiver decided the matter.

  ‘What?’ she heard him say in horrified incredulity, ‘But how . . . ? Who . . . ? Which hospital is she in, Danny? Dear Lord, WHICH HOSPITAL?’

  Ruth was out of bed in a flash, her heart slamming against her ribcage. Was it Carrie who had been injured? Was it Rose? As she ran down the stairs to join him at the telephone table in the hall her eyes urgently held his, but he was too shocked by what Danny was telling him for him to be able to mouth a name and put her out of her mental agony.

  ‘Dear God,’ he was saying, ‘Jack did what? They’ve taken him where? St Thomas’s? And Mavis is in Guy’s and that’s where you are? In Guy’s Casualty Department?’

  Ruth dug her nails into her palms. What in the name of God had happened? Had Jack and Danny, and Carrie or Rose, all been in Jack’s car together and had the car been in a crash? Or perhaps it wasn’t Carrie or Rose that Bob was referring to when he asked ‘Which hospital was she in?’ Perhaps it was Christina. Perhaps . . .

  ‘It’s Mavis,’ he said to her in a cracked voice and then, to Danny, ‘Yes, yes, of course I will. Straight away. And the police? Yes, yes, I understand.’ His hand was shaking as he put the receiver back on its rest.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Ruth never raised her voice or gave way to panic, but she could feel herself doing so now. ‘Please, Bob! Was it a car accident? Is Mavis badly hurt? Is Jack hurt, too? And Danny?’

  Dazedly Bob shook his head. As a vicar he was accustomed to hearing bad news, and to being the bearer of bad news, but this little lot was almost beyond belief. ‘Mavis was in a club,’ he said, wondering which home he should visit first, Mavis’s, Danny’s or Jack’s. ‘A club Jack owns in Soho. It isn’t open yet and she was in it on her own . . . checking things over probably . . . Jack had asked her to run it for him . . .’ There was no point in going down to Jack’s, he thought, his mind racing. Christina wouldn’t be there, she was living with her mother in Greenwich. ‘Some thugs broke in – Archie Duke and his mob – and they . . . they . . .’ His voice cracked again. Danny said they had dislocated her arm, broken three of her ribs and cut her face so badly with a broken drinking glass that it was doubtful if even Miriam would recognize her.

  Try as he might, he couldn’t put what had been done to Mavis into words. ‘They beat her,’ he said, knowing he’d have to break the news to Miriam and Albert, as well as to Ted. ‘Badly.’

  Ruth grasped hold of the banister rail. ‘And Jack and Danny? How were they hurt? You said Mavis was in the club on her own . . .’

  Mindful of the many people he had to see and of the importance of seeing them all as quickly as possible, Bob forced himself out of his shocked stupor. He had to get dressed. Ted Lomax and Carrie Collins would be out of their minds with worry, wondering where their other halves were.

  ‘An anonymous caller phoned the gym, telling Jack what had happened. He went straight down there and Danny and whoever else was in the gym at the time went with him . . .’ He was already halfway back to the bedroom, Ruth at his heels, all thoughts of cups of tea forgotten. ‘They called an ambulance for Mavis, and then Jack went immediately in search of Archie Duke,’ he continued, pulling on trousers and socks, feverishly trying to locate his dog-collar.

  ‘Dear God.’ Ruth knew now what was to come. She sat down on the bed, weak-kneed. ‘And he took Danny with him? He and Danny went to sort out Archie Duke and his mob and now they’re so badly hurt they’re both in hospital?’

  Bob scrabbled under the wardrobe for a pair of shoes. He would speak to Ted first, then Carrie, and then he’d go down to Greenwich to speak to Christina. However unhappy the present situation between Jack and Christina, she needed to be told what had happened, especially as Jack’s condition was obviously so grave. A knife wound, Danny had said, a knife wound close to his heart.

  Telling Ruth only the good news, he said, ‘Danny isn’t badly hurt. He’s on his way home now. Will you go round to Malcolm Lewis’s for me and tell him I’m going to need his car and his help as a chauffeur?’ He had his jacket on now and was again at the bedroom door. He was going to need transport if he were to get to Greenwich with all possible speed. Under the present circumstances, fifteen minutes spent walking there was going to be
fifteen too long. Christina would need transport, too, to get to the hospital, as would Ted Lomax. Malcom Lewis, his scoutmaster and right-hand man, was going to be kept busy over the next few hours.

  ‘If Malcolm wants to know where to find me, tell him I’m going to the Lomax’s first, then to the Collins’s.’

  ‘And Charlie’s,’ Ruth said, knowing that Jack must have been badly hurt; that if he hadn’t been, Bob would have told her. ‘You’ll have to let Charlie know what has happened.’

  Bob blanched. Charlie was well in his eighties and Jack was his only son. It was going to be no fun waking Charlie with his news. ‘Yes,’ he agreed tersely. ‘Tell Malcolm if he hasn’t caught up with me by the time I’ve left Carrie’s, I’ll be at Charlie’s.’

  As he ran down the stairs, Ruth forced herself to her feet. She had to dress and go down to number eleven to wake Malcolm. Then she would come back home and put the kettle on for a pot of tea. Unless she was very much mistaken, she was going to have quite a few distressed callers over the next few hours.

  Ted Lomax wasn’t only distressed, he was beside himself with fury.

  ‘If Jack knew Mavis had been hurt hours ago, why didn’t he come round here and tell me? Why did he go racing up to the hospital with Danny, not me? I’m her husband, for Christ’s sake! And it was down to me to sort Archie fucking Duke out, not him!’

  Bob didn’t turn a hair at Ted’s language. He was accustomed to hearing people swear strongly when under stress, and Ted certainly had every reason to be stressed. He’d been sitting in an armchair, fully dressed, still waiting up for Mavis, when Bob knocked at the door and broke the news to him of what had happened. Now, refusing to wait for Malcolm to arrive, he was intent on making his own way up to Guy’s Hospital.