George nodded. ‘Thanks, Rob. I’d best be off.’ He set off again, pedalling hard uphill towards Commercial Street, where his friend, Herbert Burrows, lived. After a rapid bargaining session over the loan of the motor-bike, a gleaming black and silver roadster with a four-cylinder engine, George took the machine out of the back yard on to the road. He kicked the pedal starter and roared the motor into action with a twist of the handlebar throttle. He set off and within minutes was approaching Bear Lane in a cloud of blue smoke and petrol fumes.
Taken aback, Hettie caught sight of him as she came out of the Mission. She accepted the lift and stepped gingerly into the three-wheeled, sporty little side-car. ‘Good job I tied my bonnet on,’ she joked nervously. It was her first time in such a contraption, which seemed dangerously fast, unstable and close to the ground. She found going round bends too terrifying for words, and the roar of the exhaust as George came down the gears to stop at junctions jarred her nerves.
At last, Ealing Common hove into view, edged by gas-lamps, covered by a fine autumn mist. George slowed to a halt outside Jess’s house, jumped off the saddle and ran gallantly to open Hettie’s low door. She felt her knees wobble and her hand shake as she stepped out.
‘You wasn’t scared, was you?’ George grinned.
‘Not a bit. Just chilly,’ she said airily. Then she laughed. ‘Scared to death, if you must know.’ She invited him in for cocoa, glad to have him there to help break the atmosphere that was bound to develop between Jess and Maurice when he got home from the cinema.
When Maurice did walk in, George was already sitting with his large hand wrapped around a blue and white striped mug. He was there when Maurice told Jess that he’d carried out his threat to sack Charlie Ogden for not pulling his weight. Jess could only sit there in silent, helpless anger. Then George changed the subject by dropping his own bombshell. ‘I decided, I’m gonna finish at the Duke tomorrow,’ he announced. ‘I ain’t happy under Bertie Hill. I’m gonna look around for a new place.’
When they got over their surprise, Hettie, Jess and Maurice nodded, understood, showed their appreciation. At just gone midnight, Hettie showed him to the door, waiting for him to fix his cap on his head, back to front, to keep the peak out of the wind. Then she kissed him gently and gratefully.
‘I did the right thing, then?’ he asked. ‘I don’t want no one thinking bad of me.’
‘No one could,’ she whispered, ‘Least of all me, George. I think you’re a lovely man, and I’m a lucky woman, that’s what I think.’
Their embrace, close and warm, sealed his decision. Next day, his day off, he went specially to the Duke and told Hill he could stick his bleeding job on someone else, if he could find anyone in Duke Street low enough to take it on.
In the middle of October, Sadie went back to the doctor to have her pregnancy confirmed. The baby was due in May.
After her row with Richie over going behind his back to see if she could get his old job back, she hadn’t dared follow up the possibility, and Richie was still without work. True to his word, Walter had in fact telephoned to say that Rob was fixed as ever against the idea of reinstating Richie. Rob was in a spot of bother himself, and Walter advised her to leave the problem alone for the time being. He was sorry, but try as he might, he hadn’t been able to help.
As her troubles mounted, instead of going under as might have been suspected, Sadie’s backbone seemed to stiffen. As soon as the baby became definite, the tears and pleas vanished and she became determined to manage. She put it down to an experience she had on coming out of the doctor’s surgery with the news that she was indeed pregnant.
She thanked the doctor, a bookish-looking young woman with horn-rimmed glasses, who’d chosen to come and work in London’s East End after a medical training in Edinburgh. She was observant enough to notice that Sadie’s left hand lacked a wedding ring. ‘And you think you’ll be able to manage?’ Dr McLeod asked, remarking Sadie’s slight figure and pale young race.
Sadie nodded. ‘Yes, thanks. We’ll be fine.’
‘We?’
‘Me and Richie, the baby’s pa.’
Reassured, the doctor smiled. ‘And you have family to help?’
‘Ain’t no need. We’ll manage.’ Sadie’s head went up as she walked from the surgery and headed, only partly consciously, by bus along the leafstrewn and windswept roads to Green Park, where she alighted and gave herself one precious half-hour to absorb the news.
It was five o’clock, the sky already lead-grey and fast losing its light. The leaves of the sycamore trees hung from their branches like so many limp yellow flags. Brown ones, already fallen, crunched underfoot. A cold breeze made her pull her red coat around her, shoulders hunched, cutting across the grass to avoid the paths where tramps slept upright on the benches and stray dogs searched for scraps. No lamps were lit, and it was easy for Sadie to feel herself swallowed by the dusk, to sense a calm beginning to envelop her, here under the trees, among the green and gold and autumnal browns. She stopped to look up through the branches of a great horse-chestnut tree, watching leaves loosen and spiral to the ground. ‘Well,’ she thought, as dearly, as certainly as she’d ever thought anything, ‘I’m gonna have this baby.’ Immediately she talked to the child in her womb as if it had life of its own and was capable of hearing. ‘Don’t you worry, everything’s fine now. I’m gonna take care of you and see to you, and you ain’t never gonna be left on your own.’
She strode on across the grass. ‘We’ll have each other, and Richie will grow to love you as much as me. There’ll be the three of us, and we don’t need no one else. There’s gonna be just me and you and Richie. Life’s a wonderful thing, I promise. The world’s a beautiful place. Look at the trees, them leaves, that sky.’
She walked herself into a trance, only breaking out of it when she reached some far railings; and the sound of trams, buses and other traffic broke into her daydream. Then she caught sight of the clock in the square tower of a church opposite, saw that Richie would be expecting her. She turned to go home to Mile End, and to talk over realities; the fact that she would lose her job as soon as her condition began to show, that they must meanwhile scrape and save every penny, that he must find work at all costs.
For days after Maurice announced that he’d gone ahead and sacked Charlie Ogden, Jess could hardly bring herself to speak to him. His apparent heartlessness frightened her; how could he throw on to the scrapheap someone who’d trusted and relied on him for so long? Charlie had even cut short his school career to go into the cinema business, dreaming the boys’ dream of bright lights and success, albeit from the wrong side of the flickering screen. True, his enthusiasm had waned along with those early dreams, but he was reliable, he knew all there was to know about front-of-house, and besides, the Ogdens were close neighbours of the Parsonses, and Jess felt personally responsible for letting them down.
What would Charlie do now? His slight stature and sensitive air made him ill-equipped to vie for work on the docks, or even on the markets, and Jess couldn’t see him chained to a factory bench for the rest of his days. These thoughts churned in her head, like a whirring engine that drove her further out of sympathy with her husband’s action. Maurice himself, his mouth set firm, his eyes avoiding hers, refused to discuss it.
When she heard of it, Amy sparked like a firework. The idea that Charlie had been badly used lit her anger and sent her running in all directions: to the Gem where she demanded but failed to get a confrontation with Maurice Leigh, down Paradise Court to her own house, where Dolly sat grim-faced, Arthur fumed helplessly, and Charlie himself was nowhere to be seen. Then Amy went down to Annie’s house, muffled in her fur collar and black wrapover coat, hammering at their door to see if Duke could be persuaded to reason with Maurice on the phone.
Annie came to the door. ‘Duke ain’t well,’ she reported. ‘I sent him to bed with a hot-water bottle and a close of cough mixture.’
Amy was near the end of her tether. ‘I’m sorry h
e ain’t well, Annie. But have you heard what they done to Charlie?’ She got rid of some of her frustration by taking Annie through events step by step. ‘It ain’t right, you gotta admit. Maurice is getting as bad as them bosses in the mines and in the mills up north. He’s playing God; ain’t nobody gonna stop him?’
Annie shook her head in embarrassment. She’d asked Amy into the front room. ‘I ain’t got the full story,’ she reminded her. ‘I’d have to talk to Maurice.’
Amy seized on this. ‘You’re a pal, Annie. You do that, and I’ll nip across to the depot and see if I can get Rob on our side. I tell you what, by the time we’re finished, Maurice will be sorry he started any of this.’
Annie saw her out and watched her go, running up the court between pools of gaslight, disappearing round the strangely quiet corner where the new electric lights glared from the walls of the pub. Quickly she shut her door and went to think over this latest event.
‘Rob?’ Amy dashed into the taxi depot. He was sitting by the telephone, feet up on the desk, catching forty winks. He awoke with a start.
‘Where’s the bleeding fire?’
‘Ain’t no fire, Rob, but I’ll light one under Maurice Leigh’s backside if he ain’t careful!’ Once more she recounted the full story. ‘You have to tell Maurice to give Charlie his job back, right this minute. Get on the phone to him, why don’t you?’ She thrust the telephone towards him.
‘He’ll be at work.’ Rob sniffed. ‘Anyhow, I can’t go barging in. It’s his affair, ain’t it?’
Amy snorted. ‘You bosses, you’re all the bleeding same!’ She recalled how quick Rob and Walter had been to get rid of Richie Palmer the minute the mechanic crossed them over Sadie.
Rob was stung. ‘No, we ain’t. Ours was different.’ He stared back at her. ‘From what you say, Charlie ain’t done nothing wrong.’
‘Not a blind thing. It’s that Maurice. He’s too big for his boots these days. Well, if there was a union Charlie could join to look after his rights, he’d sign up like a flash.’
‘Steady on, Amy.’ Rob stood up. He found himself torn two ways. His instinctive sympathy in any situation was still for the underdog, even though he respected Maurice’s business sense and strong ambition. ‘Listen, I’ll have a word with Maurice as soon as I can. That’ll have to do for the time being.’
Amy subsided into Rob’s vacant chair. ‘That’s something, at any rate.’ At last she’d run out of anger over Charlie.
‘You’re your mother’s daughter all right.’ Rob perched on the desk and smiled down at her. ‘I like it when you get mad,’ he said suavely.
‘Yes, and you’ve been watching too many Douglas Fairbanks pictures,’ she grumbled, already melting under his flattery.
‘Ain’t I told you, you’re the splitting image of Gloria Swanson?’
‘Only when you want something out of me, Robert Parsons.’
Rob’s expression was one of pained innocence. ‘Me? How could you?’ He leaned forward to kiss her on the mouth. ‘See, all I wanted was to give you a kiss.’
Amy tilted back her head, closed her eyes and sighed. ‘And here I have to go and spoil a good thing.’
‘Why, you don’t have to get straight off, do you? Can’t you stay a bit longer?’
She nodded, opening her eyelids. ‘It ain’t that. But now I’m here, there’s something I gotta tell you.’
Rob leaned back, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘Fire away.’ He expected another of the little melodramas that Amy went in for.
She decided not to beat about the bush. ‘I ain’t sure yet, Rob, but I think I’m having a kid.’ She said it straight out.
She’d known for weeks, but only just got around to having it confirmed.
Rob looked as if he’d been shot. He sat rigid, ready to keel over at the news. ‘How?’ When he did find his voice, out came this childish question.
‘How do you think, Rob?’ She arched her eyebrows. There: she’d gone and spoiled anything they might have had going for them. She had sense enough to realize that by dropping this hot potato in his lap, Rob would want to run a mile. That was the end of their little jaunts and nights together. ‘I thought you ought to know, that’s all.’ She stood up and gathered her coat about her.
But Rob threw down his cigarette and caught hold of her arm. ‘Amy, have I got this right? Are you saying this kid’s mine?’ He knew he wasn’t her only boyfriend, far from it.
Amy, apparently so blasé, seemed wounded by this. ‘I wouldn’t be telling you if it wasn’t yours, now would I? I’d be dropping the bad news on some other poor bleeder.’ Her voice was dry, edging towards a break. She tried to pull free and walk away. ‘It’s all right, Rob. I ain’t gonna hold you to nothing. I know we been playing a dangerous game and breaking a few rules here and there if we wanted to stay out of serious trouble. In the end, I only got myself to blame.’
But he stood in her way, still trying to take in the news. ‘What you gonna do now?’ he whispered.
‘Leave it to me,’ she sighed. ‘A friend of a friend . . . You know the rest.’
‘You gonna get rid of it? Is that what you want?’ Rob was confused. But he stood in her way, barring her exit.
‘Look here, Rob, forget it. Forget I ever said it. I’ll deal with it by myself. I won’t be the first girl who’s had to, and I’m bleeding sure I won’t be the last.’
‘And you say he’s mine?’
‘It,’ she insisted. ‘Yes, yes! Got it? Come on, Rob, let go of me. I gotta go.’
Her determination seemed to set him on his own course. Never in his wildest dreams did he think this would happen. At the same time he knew his precautions weren’t thorough, but so far they had been without any consequences. Now it had happened, and something told him this wasn’t a life you could just throw away. Perhaps he’d seen too much of that in the trenches – human life trampled in the mud and barbed wire – ever to contemplate wasting it himself. But there was a more positive idea too; a flickering notion that he might be a father, a good one at that. No one had planned it this way. He didn’t think Amy had trapped him; she was too smart to risk it. No, it was one of those things. Looking at her now, he saw her struggling for control, wanting to walk clean away. ‘Don’t,’ he said, pulling her close. ‘I want you to stay.’
‘I can’t, Rob. I ain’t in the mood.’ Tears had begun. She was ashamed of her weakness.
‘No, I mean I want you to stay with me.’ He held her. ‘I want us to keep this kid, Amy. And if you like we’ll get married beforehand, just to make it all legal and above board for him when he’s born.’
Chapter Eighteen
Duke was ailing, Annie realized. Bronchitis had settled on to his chest, worsened by thick smog; that combination of wet mist, factory and traffic fumes that they called the London particular. It sank on the lungs like an acrid, cold blanket; filthy, bitter-tasting and thick.
It held up the traffic and clogged up both mind and body. No one felt like venturing out, and if they had to, they muffled up behind thick woollen scarves wrapped two or three times around the face. Other figures would emerge out of the yellow mist, insubstantial as ghosts. Sensible folk stayed in and waited all through late October for the fog to lift.
Duke sat indoors, struggling for breath. Annie tried him with poultices and inhalations, to ease the congestion. Frances brought flowers of sulphur, friars’ balsam, various pick-me-ups, all to no avail.
‘It ain’t the same down this end of the court,’ he confided to Frances. ‘Don’t say nothing to Annie, but up at the Duke I could catch my breath, even in the worst of these pea-soupers.’ He drew breath through a crackle, of congested phlegm and fluid, shaking his head in helpless frustration.
Frances knew it was a state of mind as much as anything. Duke was pining for the beer barrels and pumps, the routine, the company of the old way of life. Down here he felt useless, his life’s work valued as nothing by the brewers. It was a bitterness that found no expression, and dragged him
into a decline, like the murky fog all around. She patted his hand, shook her head sadly at Annie and trailed off home.
But Annie refused to let Duke sink into apathy. She walked him about the house, wrapped in thick layers of vests, cardigans and scarves folded tight across his chest. She got people to visit and keep him cheerful; he was fond of Walter popping in for a chat, and Arthur Ogden needed no encouragement to come on an evening and put his feet up by their hearth for a game of dominoes and a steady supply of malt whisky. ‘Purely medicinal,’ he assured Annie, who kept a critical eye on the bottle. ‘It helps clear the chest.’
But there was one visit, far from welcome, that occurred as the month drew to a close. There was a knock on the door, and Annie opened it to the uniformed figure of Constable Grigg.
Her smile turned to a frown. ‘You come to tell us the name of the one what done Wiggin in?’ she barked; a terrier on her home ground.
Grigg stepped over the threshold, shaking out his cape and spying the row of hooks in the hall to hang it from. Reluctantly Annie led him through to the kitchen, where Duke sat, pale and drawn, wheezing heavily. The policeman took in the tidy scene; Annie’s copper kettle singing on the old-fashioned hob, the polished steel knobs, the blacked grate. A tub of coloured wooden spills sat on the mantelpiece, next to a fat biscuit barrel and a framed photograph of the whole Parsons clan. Grigg spotted Rob in the back row, recognizable by the black moustache and the jaunty set of his hat. Duke and Annie sat on the front row, bang in the middle, staring proudly out. ‘I’m sorry you ain’t feeling too good,’ he said, thrown off his investigative stride. ‘This won’t take long, I hope.’ He sat, on the wooden chair offered by Annie, then cleared his throat.
‘It ain’t the time it takes I’m worried about.’ Duke regarded him with suspicion. ‘So long as you get the right man in the end.’ It was the first they’d seen of the police since Annie and he had gone up to Union Street with Rob and Amy, and they’d begun to hope that the trail had gone elsewhere. The reappearance of the keen young bobby was by no means good news. ‘You seen Rob’s statement, I take it?’
After Hours Page 22