‘Maybe,’ Rob said again. He stuck his head into the lists of figures, refusing to look up as Walter choked the engine into life and headed off to collect his fare.
Amy Ogden signed out of her crib at Dickins and Jones with the information that she was heading down to home turf on her night off.
‘Cheerio!’ Sammy Hutchinson called from his top-floor dormitory where all the male assistants stayed. He saw her step smartly into the narrow alleyway as he hung his work shirt out to dry.
Amy stopped to wave. ‘I know, Sammy, “Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do!” ’ It was their refrain whenever they spotted one another going out on the town. ‘Would I?’ She blew a kiss then ran on to the street, heading for the Oxford Circus tube and all points south.
In the railway carriage, she took her little mirror from her clutch-bag and checked her lashes and lips, happy with an arrangement of beads and feathers forming a circlet around her newly blonde hair. She would knock Rob dead tonight, if he did but know it. She’d get him to take her out in the car, maybe downriver into the countryside. ‘It’s a nice night,’ she said to herself as she mounted the stairs into the warm evening light, under hoardings advertising Pears’ Soap and Nestlé’s Milk. Nothing could dent her mood; not even the usual sights of ragged children clustered in doorways and grim-faced women shuffling down from the railway embankment with an armful of potatoes or some half-rotten cabbage leaves.
‘Nice night,’ she repeated to Rob as she waltzed into his narrow office in a strong swirl of lily-of-the-valley perfume and face powder.
‘Is it?’ He glanced up, his face a picture of peevish displeasure.
Amy laughed out loud. ‘It was till I came in here!’ She seized the black ledger he was poring over and slammed it shut. ‘Robert Parsons, get your hat. You’re gonna take me for a drive!’ she announced.
‘Am I?’ He smoothed his moustache and frowned up at her. ‘And who’ll run this show while we’re off hobnobbing?’
‘Walter will. Won’t you, Walter?’ Amy’s voice wheedled as she heard Walter Davidson come into the office.
‘I already told Rob I would.’ He hung his hat back an its peg.
‘Oh, come on, Rob, it ain’t as if it’s a weekend or nothing!’ Amy was unashamed as she perched on his knee and slung her arms around his neck.
He swung her back on to her feet. ‘All right, hold your horses while I hand on these messages to Walter. Go and wait in the car.’
She grinned. ‘That’s the ticket.’ She was pleased with her persuasive powers as she went out to sit and wait. Rob always came round, no matter how grumpy he was at the start. She slid into the passenger seat and anticipated their evening out: a drive out of the city, a drink in a country pub before they found a nice quiet lovers’ lane, some woodland spot where Rob would spread a blanket on the ground in the moonlight, among the primroses. It would be almost romantic, almost like it was in the pictures.
‘You ain’t going out tonight, then?’ Hettie asked Sadie. It was unusual enough for her to comment on.
Sadie shook her head. She’d just met up with Richie for a quick drink after work, but this was her evening in for washing her hair and curling up with a good book. There’d been precious few lately, since she’d got caught up in the storm of emotions connected with Richie Palmer.
‘Put the flags out,’ Hettie said, caustic for once. ‘It’s about time you stopped to let your feet touch the ground.’ Although the whole family knew that things had cooled between her and Walter, Sadie had not confided her new state of affairs to anyone. She grew tense when the subject was mentioned, and more-secretive as the weeks went by.
‘Don’t go on, Ett,’ she said, affecting concentration. But the words on the page blurred. Although Hettie let it go and drifted downstairs to help in the pub, Sadie’s own thoughts were enough to make the print swim before her eyes.
The simple fact was, she couldn’t get Richie Palmer out of her mind. He was locked in there, a secret she dare not share because she didn’t want to admit the strength of her feelings for him.
Richie took her out three or four times a week, usually well away from Duke Street. Still poor in the word department, he never said he loved her, but actions spoke louder than words. He wanted to be with her, touching, kissing, walking close by her side. She’d grown used to his face: the heavily lidded eyes, the straight nose, the full mouth. It was like a contour map she could trace inside her own head and conjure up to catch herself out while she sat typing, or reading, as now. The sound of his voice ordering a drink would echo in her mind, and she would look up, surprised to find herself at home or at work. His image filled her dreams, not pleasantly as a romantic hero, but as an obsession she couldn’t move away from, sentenced to go wherever he went, though he might not even acknowledge she was there.
‘Fool!’ she told herself. She would have to get up to look in the mirror and talk straight at her reflection. ‘What’s happening to you? What has happened to your life?’ But any resolution to distance herself from Richie melted away as soon as they met. He would clasp her hand, walk her along, claim her.
The trouble was, she read things into his silences, even if she suspected they were the wrong things; her romantic heart leading her to raise conclusions, she lacked a guide to put her straight. Her sisters would never understand. Theirs would be a paler version of Rob’s antipathy to Richie, and they would side with Walter, her old flame.
She told herself versions of Richie’s life story, half making it up, snatching at fragments that he himself let slip. He’d always been alone; she knew that much. He’d built a shell around himself, fooling people with a hard, tough exterior. But really he was easily hurt. He was proud, despite his poor beginnings, with the pride of an animal strong enough to protect his own territory; in this case, his heart.
Sadie would gaze into his face before she kissed it. It seemed to her that even his words had to fight to escape through clenched teeth in case they betrayed him. She got used to his low, indistinct voice. It was one of the things she loved best.
Her evening at home had turned as always into the fascinating study of the workings of Richie Palmer’s mind, when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She recognized Rob’s tread and a lighter step, probably a woman’s. Before she had time to close her book and slip away, Amy Ogden had opened the door and entered the room laughing.
‘Oh no you don’t!’ Amy swept in. ‘No sneaking off, Sadie Parsons. Put that kettle on and make us a cup of cocoa while we put our feet up. We been out driving, and we need a nightcap before Rob drives me back to the barracks!’ She pretended to give a smart salute. ‘I ain’t signed out for the whole night, so I gotta get back.’
Something about the way Sadie put down her book, a small, superior smile perhaps, irritated Rob. Sadie needn’t get on her high horse about Amy; she was no better than anyone else round here when it came to it.
While Sadie put the kettle to boil and Amy chatted on, Rob decided to knock his sister off her perch, as he called it. ‘Ain’t the Duke good enough for you no more, then?’ he dropped in, stretching his chin over her shoulder, pretending to sniff the cocoa.
‘What you on about now?’ She shrugged him off, hoping that he wasn’t planning to annoy her, totally unsuspecting.
‘It’s the Lamb and Flag now, I take it?’
The spoon froze in mid-air. Sadie couldn’t frame a reply, remembering that she’d been in the Lamb with Richie earlier that evening. What had Rob seen? Was her secret out? Eventually she stammered something about popping in with a friend.
‘O-ho!’ Amy spotted gossip. ‘She’s got a guilty conscience, I’d say, Rob. Just look at her, she’s red as a beetroot!’
‘Shut up, Amy!’ Sadie threw the spoon on to the table. She turned to confront her brother. ‘Come out with it, say what you want to say!’
Amy pretended to retreat behind a magazine, her mouth puckered, eyebrows raised. She kept her ears wide open: it promised to build up into something she wouldn
’t miss for the world.
‘I’ll say what I gotta say tomorrow morning down the depot, when Richie Palmer comes in.’ Rob met her gaze. His voice had fallen to a low, deliberate pitch.
The sound of Richie’s name opened the floodgates of Sadie’s panic. ‘No, Rob! That ain’t fair, you leave him out of this!’
‘I’d leave him out if he’d leave you out.’ Rob intended to see this argument through. He forgot all about Amy sitting there, ears flapping, as he launched into Sadie for letting down the family’s name. ‘He ain’t nothing but a grease monkey, and you know it!’
‘Keep this between you and me, Rob. You ain’t got no right to talk about Richie that way!’
‘No, but I got the right to tell him to move on all right, and that’s what I plan to do first thing tomorrow morning.’
Amy’s eyes shone. She turned back to Sadie, awaiting her next move.
Sadie took a deep breath. ‘You do that, Rob Parsons, you give Richie the sack for no good reason, and that’s the last you’ll see of me round here!’ She began to shout and flounce towards the landing.
‘Tell the whole bleeding street, why don’t you?’ He sneered as he took out a cigarette and lit it.
‘I mean it. You get rid of Richie and I go too. ‘Cos you make me sick, that’s why, with your bullying and throwing your weight around. Who do you think you are, telling me what to do, lording it over everyone like you do, when you’re really just as bad. No, you’re worse! We all know what you get up to in the back of that taxi, and it ain’t nice!’ Sadie shot a glance at Amy, who turned to her magazine to hide her own blushes. ‘So don’t think you can go on about other people and get away with it yourself, you bleeding hypocrite!’ The rush of words left Sadie shaking. Her throat felt constricted, there were hot tears in her eyes.
Slowly Amy clapped into the silence. ‘Hurrah!’ she drawled. ‘You tell him, girl.’ To her credit, she recognized a good show when she saw one and didn’t take Sadie’s insulting implications personally.
Rob shrugged. He blew a tunnel of smoke towards the ceiling. ‘It don’t make no difference,’ he pointed out. ‘Go ahead, bawl away all you like, Sadie. But tomorrow morning, first thing, I go down that garage and I give Richie Palmer his marching orders.’
Chapter Ten
It was a desperate Sadie who tried to intervene between her brother and her lover the following morning. She waited at the entrance to the taxi depot, a grey woollen jacket slung around her shoulders, gazing up the length of Meredith Court, not caring who saw her watching out for Richie in the morning light.
Walter Davidson came into work at six-thirty from his lodgings further up Duke Street. He guessed at once what the matter was.
Sadie ran up to him. ‘Oh, Walter, thank God you’re here! You gotta stop Rob. He’s got it in for Richie now, unless you can do something to stop him!’ Her pretty face was screwed up in an agony of fury and despair. She hadn’t had a wink of sleep, anxious to beat Rob down to the yard, slipping out of the house before anyone else was up, to stand waiting in the cold dawn.
Walter swung open the gates and walked ahead towards the office. He flung his newspaper on to the desk and hung up his hat, considering his next move. ‘I ain’t told Rob nothing about you two,’ he assured her. Being near Sadie still had the power to disturb his even temperament. He had to turn to one side to busy himself with opening bills and letters.
‘I know you ain’t. The problem is, he seen us!’ Time was running out. Any moment, either Rob or Richie would be coming into work. ‘And now he says he’ll show Richie the door, but it ain’t his fault, and we ain’t even doing nothing wrong. I came clean with you, Walter. You gotta tell Rob that.’
Walter sighed. ‘It won’t make no difference.’ He’d spotted Richie sloping in across the yard. Rob himself wouldn’t be far behind. ‘You know Rob.’
Sadie choked and slumped down at the desk. ‘It ain’t fair,’ she sobbed, head in hands.
‘Listen, the best thing is for me to break it to Richie and give him his wages before Rob gets here,’ Walter decided. ‘Then it’s up to him if he wants to have it out with Rob. If he’s got any sense, though, he’ll take the money and hop it.’
Sadie knew he wouldn’t. She couldn’t imagine Richie running away from a fight.
Richie had come into work as usual, collar up, shoulders hunched down Meredith Court. But when he spotted Sadie in the office talking to Walter, looking upset, it only took him a second to work things out. He stared warily at them both, then glanced over his shoulder to see if Rob was following him in.
The moment Sadie looked up and saw him, she reached a further level of panic. Common sense fled as she dashed out to meet him, desperate to warn him so he would be ready to face Rob. Rob mustn’t get it all his own way.
But there was no time to explain. Rob’s uneven footsteps crunched across the cinder track, he turned the corner into the yard. Richie pushed Sadie to one side, telling Walter to take care of her. He stood, feet wide apart, facing Rob.
‘Right, Palmer, you know what this is about! Take your nasty face out of here, and don’t never show it no more!’ Rob was fired up by the scene that confronted him, Sadie crying, begging Walter, of all people for help. He acted without hesitation, his dark eyes narrowed in an angry frown.
Richie gestured again to Sadie to stay out of it as she tried to break free of Walter. He faced Rob with a cool stare. ‘Don’t worry, I’m on my way,’ he drawled. ‘You can stick your job, Parsons. I’m sick of it anyhow.’
Rob, who had been building up for a straight fight, was caught off guard. ‘Go on, get out!’ He punched out the words, still expecting resistance from Richie, who, after all, was big and strong enough to give him trouble.
The mechanic turned down the corners of his mouth, shot Rob a pitying look from head to crippled toe, and turned his back. Rob lunged clumsily. Sadie wrenched free of Walter and caught hold of her brother, pulling him back by the sleeve. She saw Richie hesitate as Rob swung round to push her off, but he walked on, head high, away from the depot.
‘Right, Rob Parsons, that’s it!’ Sadie was screaming at the top of her voice. ‘You just wait!’ Her helpless threats echoed under the dark roof arch. ‘You just wait and see!’ She ran out across the yard, up Meredith Court, top late to spot where Richie had headed off to. Weeping tears of angry frustration, she made her way home.
‘What are you up to at this time, girl?’ Duke came along the corridor to investigate the noises in Sadie’s room. It was still early, not half past seven. He was only just up and dressed.
‘I’m packing my bag, Pa, what’s it look like?’ Sadie could hardly see through her tears. She flung underthings from a drawer into a canvas bag, hands shaking, her stomach in knots.
‘It’s Rob, ain’t it?’ Duke knew there’d been a row the night before. Annie said so, and warned him it looked serious. Rob and Sadie were at each other’s throats again, she said, and with their tempers, things could turn nasty. So Duke was expecting more trouble.
Now Sadie blurted out Rob’s crime of sacking Richie. She was still beside herself, crying and trembling.
‘And what’s it to you?’ Duke asked slowly. These days Sadie never confided in him. He prepared for a shock.
‘Richie and me’s walking out, Pa! That’s why Rob done it.’
‘Because of Walter?’ It began to make sense. Rob’s loyalty to his friend would override everything else.
‘But Walter knew,’ she insisted. ‘I ain’t done nothing behind his back, not since the first time.’
He looked at her shaking and crying. She was a slender, pale, dark-haired young woman, still a girl to him. Hettie wouldn’t go and make a fuss like this, he thought; nor Jess, nor Frances, not over a lover’s tiff. ‘Pull yourself together, girl,’ he said sternly. ‘No need to go on.’
But she turned on him. ‘Go on, Pa, take his side! You and Rob won’t never understand.’ She flung more clothes into the bag, tears dripping off the end of her nose
. ‘Ain’t no use talking to you!’
‘I never said I was on Rob’s side.’
‘You don’t have to say it. Well, you won’t have to watch me “going on” no more, as you call it, ’cos I’m leaving! And good riddance, says you!’
‘I never said that neither.’ Duke tried to steady his voice. It looked like Sadie was serious. ‘Just hold on, Sadie. Where you off to, for God’s sake?’
Her eyes flashed as she weighed the impact of her reply. ‘To Richie’s!’ she said, swinging the bag off the bed, reaching for her coat and hat.
‘Never.’ Duke sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. He blew out through his cheeks.
But Sadie swept on down the stairs. Hettie came out of her room, still in her night things, just in time to catch a glimpse of the bag Sadie carried, before the door slammed in the hallway below. ‘Pa?’ Hettie peered into her sister’s room, saw Duke sitting bewildered.
‘Sadie’s gone,’ he reported.
‘Where to?’ Hettie came and put an arm around him.
‘To Richie Palmer, she says.’ He shook his head. ‘Now why, Ett? Why would she do that?’
Hettie scrambled the facts together; this was the secret Sadie had been keeping to herself all through the spring!
‘Why’s she leaving us for Richie Palmer?’ Duke repeated.
Hettie comforted him. ‘I expect she loves him,’ she murmured. ‘That must be it, mustn’t it?’
Sadie’s morning was spent tramping the streets of Mile End looking for Richie’s lodging-house. She had only a rough idea of where he lived, and had to stop to ask many times. At last, just before midday, she arrived at an old tenement block in Hope Street. This was it. She went in under the arched brick entrance and up some dirty stone stairs until she came to number twenty-five, knocked on the door and waited amid sounds of children name-calling down in the alley, heavy drays carting sacks of flour to the biscuit factory down the street, and the smells of stale cooking and fumes from cars below. When she realized she would get no reply, she sat down heavily on her canvas bag to wait.
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