Rob shook himself free. ‘It ain’t me, Annie. I ain’t got a word in edgeways.’
‘You don’t have to. Just tell him the truth. Get yourself off the hook, for God’s sake!’ Annie felt acutely the pain of the family splintering and breaking up.
‘Tell him what?’ Amy came slowly down the dark, narrow hall. She glanced back at Duke, standing head bowed in the kitchen.
Annie turned to her. ‘Try and talk some sense into him, Amy. Spell it out.’
Amy frowned and patted her hair. ‘I would if I could, Annie. You know me, always ready to help. But blow me if I got a clue what’s going on round here!’ She stood, left out, like an actor who’s walked into the middle of the wrong play.
‘It’s Rob. They’re after him. They think he had something to do with Wiggin . . . you know!’ Annie couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud.
Amy’s mouth fell open. She stared at Rob. ‘They think you done the old sod in?’
He made a move to grab her arm. She pulled back. ‘Amy!’ he warned.
‘Yes they do!’ Annie insisted. ‘Look at Duke. Look what it’s doing to him. He can’t stand it all over again, not after Ernie. It’ll break his poor old heart.’
Amy drew herself up and walked slowly down to the kitchen. She saw Duke, the picture of misery. She knew she could sort it all out in a tick. ‘Don’t take on, Duke.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘Ain’t no need to worry.’
‘Easy to say,’ he sighed. He cast a reproachful look at his son.
‘No, honest. Rob ain’t had nothing to do with Wiggin being done in. It ain’t possible.’
‘Why not?’ Duke glanced up at Amy, his hopes revived.
‘’Cos he was with me,’ she said, keeping her head up, spelling it out loud and clear. ‘He was with me all the time it happened. We spent the night together, Rob and me!’
Chapter Sixteen
‘What happens when Dickins and Jones gets to find out?’ Annie turned to quiz Amy on their way up to Union Street station that Sunday tea-time. She knew the big West End stores liked to keep a strict eye on their living-in assistants. ‘What happens if they catch you hopping the wag?’
‘It ain’t like school,’ Amy retorted. She walked arm-in-arm with Rob up the damp street, following Annie and Duke’s steady pace.
‘More like a bleeding prison,’ Rob grumbled.
‘They gonna give you the sack?’
‘Yes, and if they do, where does that leave her?’ Rob seized on this as the reason why he’d kept quiet about his whereabouts on 3 August. ‘On the dole, that’s where.’ It was partly true; he’d seen himself as doing the decent thing by Amy in refusing to drag her name into the mud. If he upset things for her at work, another new crib would be hard to come by.
‘Oh, hush, Rob.’ Amy calmed him down. ‘I expect they’ll land me with a fine, that’s all.’ She’d got a friend, Ruby Thornton, to forge her signature and sign her back in. Ruby and she would probably both be carpeted and lose half a week’s wages. ‘Let’s get this over with. Ready?’ She drew a deep breath as their little group gathered under the blue station lamp. Then they went up the steps together.
Duke pushed open the door and marched up to the desk. He announced their business to a red-haired, freckled youngster in uniform. The constable studied them, head to one side. ‘I’ll go get the sergeant,’ he said.
Soon the old warhorse himself came wheezing out of a back office and ushered them through. He sat them down in a dark green and cream room at a deal table surrounded by six wooden chairs. A dark green metal lampshade hung low over the table. The sergeant slammed down his file and began turning pages until he found his place. ‘I hear you want to give a statement?’ He looked wearily at Rob. ‘You don’t half choose your time, pal. I was just about to clock off for the night,’ He sat, pen poised.
‘Go ahead, Rob.’ Annie sat opposite her stepson, upright and stem.
Slowly Rob began. ‘I’d like this set on the record. On the night of August the third I took Amy Ogden to the pictures at the Elephant and Castle. And after that, I drove her to my taxi depot in Meredith Court, where we spent the night together.’
Annie frowned and stared at the table. Duke looked up at the ceiling.
‘Steady on.’ The sergeant’s pen scratched slowly over the page. ‘. . . “Taxi depot in Meredith Court, where we spent the night together,”’ he repeated. Finally, he looked up at Rob. ‘Anything else?’
‘Ain’t that enough?’ Rob felt he’d been through the mill, with his pa and Annie sitting there and criticizing his every move. ‘What do you want, a blow-by-blow account?’
The sergeant didn’t blink. ‘Times of day might help. When did you end up at the depot, for a start?’
While Rob hesitated, Amy jumped in. ‘Half-eleven. We stopped for a drink at the Lamb.’
The sergeant nodded as he wrote it down. ‘Decent little pub, that.’ Then he glanced at Duke. ‘Not a patch on the old Duke, of course. Now, what time was it when you took Miss – er – Ogden here back home?’ He turned to Rob and Amy. The girl seemed to be brazening it out nicely. She sat, with her puckered red mouth, her pencilled eyebrows and blonde hair, a free-and-easy sort.
‘Half-seven next morning, Sunday that was.’ Again Amy supplied the details.
The sergeant wrote it down.
Rob stared at his broad, flat face, the seamed forehead, the thinning grey hair, oiled back and parted down the middle. ‘Is that it?’ He stood up, ready to go.
‘Hold your horses. I ain’t up with all the details on the Wiggin case,’ he confessed to them all. ‘I handed over to Constable Grigg. But he’ll want to have this signed by you, Mr Parsons. And Miss Ogden, if you give a statement here and now, it’ll save Constable Grigg the bother of coming up Regent Street for it.’
Amy’s eyes widened. She hadn’t expected they would go to such bother, and to avoid this disastrous possibility, she eagerly gave her own account, corroborating exactly what Rob had said. ‘Rob dropped me off at half-seven all right, only you don’t need to tell them that at the shop, do you?’ She still hoped to salvage her reputation and escape the fine, offering the sergeant, who seemed a man of the world, a sly wink.
The sergeant jumped on this. ‘Ain’t you told them when you got back?’
Amy’s colour rose over her tactical blunder. She sensed Rob’s impatience, spotted Duke and Annie’s worried glances. ‘I had to get someone to sign in for me on the Saturday night,’ she confessed. Now Ruby would be in trouble with the bosses for forging her signature.
‘So we just got your word to go on that you was down the taxi depot, doing whatever it was you two was doing down there. But according to the book, you was tucked up nice and comfy in your own little bed?’ The sergeant shoved the statement book towards her and watched her sign in her childlike hand.
‘But they sworn to tell the truth,’ Duke put in anxiously. ‘Rob’s giving it to you straight, I know he is.’
‘And Amy,’ Annie assured him. ‘Else why would she go and ruin her good name, if it weren’t the truth?’
The sergeant seemed to agree. ‘I’ll mention that little fact to Constable Grigg.’
‘But this is the end of it, ain’t it?’ Duke stood up, troubled by the way the interview had turned out.
The sergeant had a soft spot for the ex-publican, who’d had his bellyful of troubles lately, a salt-of-the-earth type, as anyone could tell. ‘Well, he ain’t off the hook yet,’ he explained. ‘Sometimes young Grigg’s like a rat down a drain; he finds it hard to let go when he thinks he’s on to something.’
‘But he ain’t, is he? Rob ain’t mixed up in nothing like this.’
The sergeant nodded. ‘From what I hear, he’s a bit of a hot-head. And he rubbed my constable up the wrong way all right. That’s the thing, you see.’ He offered to shake Duke’s hand as they all stood up to leave. ‘Pity he never came in with his alibi first off, but I’ll have a quiet word,’ he promised.
As the family left, h
e closed the file and looked out after them. He decided to keep Grigg off their backs for a bit; give him the nice little job of going up the Embankment to talk to any of the dossers who might have seen what went on that night. At least it would take the heat off Duke Parsons for a bit. The poor old blighter looked like he couldn’t take much more.
August 1924 came to an end, and there was a lull in the police activity over Wiggin’s death, as far as Rob, Amy and the residents of Paradise Court were concerned. Street attention focused instead on the shiny new frontage of the Prince of Wales. Workmen came to fix electric lights both inside and out. The smell of fresh paint and varnish, provided by Tommy O’Hagan at special cheap rates, hung heavy in the still, hot air.
‘So when do you lot pack in?’ Tommy quizzed one of the decorators as he took the money for a tin of brown varnish and a metal comb to pattern the surface. The redecorations seemed to be taking an age.
The young lad, whose own pasty, pliable features seemed to have been pressed on to his face like putty, gave a shrug. ‘We’ve to clear out by the end of September. That’s when the new licence comes through.’
‘Any word on the new landlord?’
‘No, it’s all very hush-hush,’ the boy replied.
‘I expect they’re worried in case they have a lynching on their hands if news gets out too soon.’ Tommy pushed his cap to the back of his head and settled in for a gossip. The decorator’s lad had to stand, varnish pot in hand, and listen to the ins and outs of street politics; everyone was against the brewery and for the old landlord, Duke Parsons. ‘What did he do wrong, for God’s sake? Put more money in their tills, that’s what.’ Tommy was gathering an audience in his loud defence of Duke. ‘Gave the people round here more of what they wanted, that’s what. A nice place to meet your mates and have a quiet drink, that’s all.’
‘A bit of a sing-song on a Saturday night,’ Nora Brady joined in. ‘Where’s the harm in that?’
‘A place to pass the time of day without no one breathing down your bleeding neck,’ another, henpecked voice cried.
‘A pub that was a cut above some!’ The consensus was instantaneous. Feeling came through loud and clear that since the brewery had turfed out Duke Parsons, the heart had gone out of Paradise Court.
Residents moved in and out, as usual. Seamen came and went from Eden House. Willie Wiggin’s old room was re-let to a young American fireman from a transatlantic cattle steamer, recognizable by his shiny peaked cap and his disconsolate air. He told Bertie Hill he planned to stay only a few weeks before finding an empty boat to sail back home.
‘If he can save his money and stay off the booze,’ Joe O’Hagan told Arthur. ‘The way I look at it is, he’s already been on one binge and drunk away all his wages. Even if he finds work round here, and it don’t fall off trees, my bet is that’s where his money will end up again, down the bleeding drain.’
But Katie stood up for him. ‘He ain’t like the men round here, Pa. He don’t drink.’
Her father swore she was a tool. Every man worth his salt enjoyed a good pint, ‘Hey, you ain’t gone and fallen for him, have you?’
She denied it hotly. Which meant she had, her mother realized. The young American’s name was Jack. He had wide, grey eyes, a frank expression and a good physique. Mary noticed he spent much time hanging around the market, looking for the chance to home in on Katie’s stall. Her daughter would respond by laughing and looking coy by turns. Mary’s heart was squeezed. She remained tight-lipped when Katie came home chattering ten to the dozen about Jack Allenby. ‘See!’ she reported to her father. ‘They ain’t allowed a drop to drink in America. Soon as his ship docked and he got paid off, he sent every penny back home to San Francisco, to his mother and his little brothers and sisters!’
‘Good for him,’ Joe retorted, on his way out to the Lamb and Flag.
But the most significant move into the court was Jack and Edith Cooper’s return to one of the terraced houses opposite Annie and Duke.
The house had been rented out for years to immigrant families and transient workers, and was sadly neglected now. It had belonged to Edith Cooper’s mother until her death from cancer in 1910. It stood empty for three years, then Jack saw a way to capitalize on Edith’s small inheritance by renting it out. Now it was the only thing they could rescue from the bankruptcy courts, since the old East End house was in Edith’s name and therefore untouchable. Swallowing their pride, they came back to their roots with worse than nothing. Jack carried a chip on his shoulder so huge that it turned everyone against him. Edith’s life of genteel luxury lay in ruins. So they sat in cold and hostile silence in the kitchen of her mother’s grimy house, before Frances and Hettie Parsons came calling one Sunday in mid-September, with a polite invitation for tea at Annie’s house, which Edith shed a tear over accepting, and at which Jack snorted with bitter contempt.
Annie welcomed Edith to her house, hiding the shock she felt over her altered appearance. The store-owner’s wife’s hair had been left to fade from rich autumn brown to its natural grey. She wore it in a plain bun low on her head. Her eyes were red-rimmed and lifeless, her cheeks drawn. Of course, the light cream and fawn coloured clothes were still good, but she wore them without conviction, as if they’d been made for someone else and suited her ill. They’d been tailored in better times for the graceful, confident figure she once possessed. Annie was careful to draw the line between compassion and patronage, offering tea and thin sandwiches, taking care to outline how bad things were in general for the people round here. Still, her sharp eyes picked up the large amber and gold brooch which Edith wore pinned to the high neck of her cream blouse. It seemed that the bailins hadn’t taken quite all, she remarked to Frances afterwards.
Hettie wished Edith Cooper well and shook her hand before she got up to go and catch her bus to Ealing. ‘It’s early days for you, I know,’ she said, ‘and I expect you and Jack will want time to get your feet under the table before you start looking around for the next thing. But it just so happens that me and Jess are looking for help in the shop. Nothing too hard. Just someone to help keep the order book straight and help with appointments and so on. I thought you might like to think about it for yourself.’
Edith considered the sweetly delivered offer.
‘Shall I mention your name to Jess?’ Hettie urged.
After a long hesitation, Edith agreed. She took Hettie’s hand between her own. ‘If you think I’d suit. I’ll have to ask Jack, of course.’
Hettie nodded. ‘No rush. Think about it while I talk to Jess. We’ve a little place on the High Street, not too grand.’
Edith smiled for the first time since her move. ‘Thanks so much, I can’t tell you . . .’ She struggled for words.
After Hettie and Frances had both gone, Annie let Edith weep on her shoulder. ‘Hettie’s got a heart of gold,’ she told her. ‘But she won’t offer a person work if she don’t think she’s up to it.’
At that, Edith cried some more.
‘And you tell that old man of yours, you plan to take up Hettie’s offer,’ Annie insisted. ‘Whether he likes it or not.’
‘There you go again.’ Jess laughed. Hettie had gone into work next day and described the Coopers’ plight. She asked her sister to think of having Edith to work in the shop. Jess sat scalloping the hem of a white chiffon dress which hung to a sporty knee length, and was designed to be worn with a jaunty embroidered skull cap set off with a swirling white feather. ‘Thinking of others as usual!’
‘But Edith could be just what we want.’ Hettie pleaded her cause. ‘You know how nicely she speaks, a real lady. And she ain’t pushy. She knows stock-keeping. It’d leave us free to design and make here in the back room, instead of the “Yes, madam, no, madam” lark out front.’
Jess laughed again. ‘I ain’t arguing.’
‘Does that mean yes?’ Sitting at her machine by the window, Hettie paused. She kept her fingers crossed.
‘Yes, ‘course. I think it’s a marvello
us idea.’
Hettie’s eyes lit up. ‘Then I’ll go across next weekend and fix it up,’ she promised.
For a while the two women worked on in silence, sitting heads bowed, amid yards of clean-smelling new fabrics, surrounded by scissors, pins, measuring-tapes and dressmakers’ dummies.
‘I been thinking,’ Hettie said at last.
‘Don’t do that. It can lead where you don’t want to follow,’ Jess joked. ‘And then you’re in a fine mess.’
‘No, honest, Jess. I been thinking about George and me.’ For weeks they’d been dancing around one another, unsure of their next move.
‘See!’ Jess snapped a thread and shook out the skirt of the dress. ‘What did I say?’ She made it a rule these days to push all worries about herself and Maurice to the back of her mind.
‘I mean to say, George and me, we’ve known each other for years now, but we ain’t getting nowhere fast. Not to my mind, we ain’t.’ Hettie allowed a sigh to escape.
‘Don’t he make you happy?’ Jess took up the subject in earnest; it was rare enough for Hettie to give time to her own concerns.
Hettie thought hard, letting the whir of her machine carry the talk forward. ‘Not happy exactly. Contented is more like.’
‘And ain’t that enough?’
‘For me it is.’ Hettie’s own horizons weren’t grand. She’d seen a terrible thing happen to Daisy O’Hagan, and she experienced the effects of raw poverty each time she walked into the Bear Lane Mission. So expectations in this life had to be limited, she knew. It was a subdued life at best, rising to glory at last in Christ’s presence. Only, she wasn’t so blinded by the light that she didn’t notice the hopes and dreams of other, more secular beings. ‘I think George wants more,’ she admitted.
‘Does he want to marry you?’
‘He ain’t asked me.’
‘But does he want to?’
Hettie nodded. ‘I think he does.’
‘And do you want him?’
‘I ain’t sure, Jess. That’s what I been trying to explain. I like George. There ain’t no harm in him, and he’s good and honest.’ She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘I’m not saying it’s him; it’s me!’
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