Hettie smiled and nodded until Dolly ran out of steam and moved across to discuss Katie O’Hagan’s plans to elope across the Atlantic with Jack Allenby.
‘We ain’t eloping, Dolly,’ Katie laughed. ‘Ma and Pa know all about it; it’s all above board. We’re saving up the passage money. Jack’s writing to his ma and pa telling them about me.’
Dolly turned to the open-faced, well-built young sailor. Within five minutes she had his entire life story under her belt; his mother’s age, his father’s occupation, the jobs on offer in San Francisco for the likes of Katie. ‘And what’s your ma say?’ she asked the girl.
Katie sighed. ‘She says “good luck”. She wishes she’d had the chance at my age.’
‘She’ll miss having you round.’
‘She will, Dolly. Don’t think I don’t know.’ Katie looked wistfully across the room at her mother, a little one on her knee, Tommy bending over her shoulder to tease the child.
‘But good luck to you, I say and all!’ Dolly rose, and, letting her purple sail billow in the wind, she drifted across the little square of dance floor to her next port of call.
By late evening, the music had slowed to the veleta and the waltz. The children rested tired heads against adults’ shoulders. The feast of cold meats, sandwiches, pickles and pies lay in ruins. The beer barrel was empty, and the wedding cake neatly boxed. Balloons wafted between the feet of close-dancing couples, streamers came unpinned from the walls. Rob had Amy in his arms and they were dancing the last waltz, their hair sprinkled with white confetti, cheek-to-cheek in a world of their own.
‘Is went off well. It was a nice wedding,’ Frances told Sadie. She’d called, desperate to build bridges with her youngest sister. Two small silver cardboard boxes of cake sat on the table between them in the Mile End living-room. ‘We all had a good time, considering.’
‘Considering what?’ Sadie made the effort to be sociable. She’d tidied her hair and put on a touch of make-up for Frances’s benefit. Richie had gone out, leaving the place to the two sisters.
‘Considering Pa ain’t been too well this winter, and we had all that worry over Rob.’ She told Sadie about the clumsy police investigation into Wiggin’s death. ‘Trust them.’ She laughed. ‘They never get nothing right.’
They shuddered over how history had nearly repeated itself for the family; first Ernie, then Rob.
‘But Pa’s all right, ain’t he?’ Sadie knew the strain he’d been under. ‘He ain’t pining for the pub?’
‘Oh, he’s pining.’ Frances sighed. ‘We was worried he’d go under. Then we got the good news about Rob, and the wedding. That picked him up no end.’
Sadie nodded.
‘Only, I wish you’d been there.’ Frances leaned forward confidentially. ‘I don’t know, somehow it felt like there was a hole, and we was going round busy mending it all the time, talking ten to the dozen about everything except you, Sadie.’
Sadie tried to laugh it off. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever been called a hole. That’s me; a ladder in a stocking!’
‘What’s wrong, Sadie? Why can’t you make it up with Rob? For Pa’s sake, at least.’ Frances had come as peacemaker. It was early December; Christmas was almost upon them. She wanted the family back together by then.
But Sadie turned serious. ‘Rob’s gotta make it up with me, Frances. Not the other way round. If Rob admits he was wrong and says sorry to Richie, then maybe I’ll consider it.’ She half turned away, her shoulders slumped, dark shadows under her eyes. ‘But then again, Rob ain’t never said sorry to no one.’
‘You ain’t sleeping well?’ Frances changed the intractable subject. ‘Are you sick much?’
Sadie nodded. ‘Every morning. It ain’t too bad though.’
‘I’ll bring you some herb teas next time. And some Pink Pills. You look a bit anaemic. Are you getting to the doctor?’
Sadie smiled again, and told Frances not to fuss.
‘I have to fuss. What else am I for? I’m your big sister, ain’t I?’ She got up and hugged her tight. ‘We miss you down Duke Street. And we wish we could help.’
‘Talk to Rob,’ Sadie said between her tears.
Frances nodded. ‘But from what I heard, Richie won’t think of going back in any case. Not after what Rob done. He’s proud, ain’t he?’
Sadie dried her eyes, settled one hand across her stomach and put on a brave face. ‘Everyone’s pride has a price,’ she pointed out. ‘Come spring, when the baby’s born and there’s no jobs for love nor money, I think even Richie will have to swallow his pride.’
‘Don’t bank on it.’ Frances saw Rob and Richie as two stubborn enemies: one on his high horse about what the mechanic did to his pal, Walter; the other’s resentment blinding him to compromise. She asked how Sadie and Richie would manage until spring. Sadie said they had a bit put by from her wages before she had been forced to own up to her condition at the office. Occasionally Richie managed to pick up casual dock work.
‘It ain’t right,’ Frances insisted, getting ready to end her visit. ‘You stuck here on your own like this, when you got us ready and willing to help just across the water. You should speak to Richie. One way or another, them two have got to make it up.’ She slid her hands into her gloves and took her hat from the table.
‘Frances!’ Sadie’s arms looked as if they would reach out, but she wrapped them around herself instead. ‘Nothing.’ She hung her head.
‘Things is all right between you and Richie?’
‘Fine.’
‘Well, chin up, then. Give it time. Things usually work out in the end.’ Frances tried to end on a cheerful note.
When she said goodbye and went down the stone steps, she looked back at Sadie, still hugging herself, pale and strained, all alone, and her heart turned over with pity.
Sadie herself watched Frances out of sight, then went inside, quickly tidying away the two boxes containing the pieces of Rob and Amy’s wedding-cake. They would only anger Richie, and send him into a black mood. The evening crawled by. Down the landing, a child cried. Sadie, put a pan of broth on the stove, turned off the light to economize, tried to read by lamplight. Still no Richie. At eleven o’clock she went to bed, tired and cold, praying that Frances someone, anyone – would be able to talk Rob round.
Chapter Twenty
Christmas came and went without healing the rift between Sadie and the rest of her family. Neither Rob nor Richie could bear to hear mention of the other’s name. Rob swore and struggled with the two unserviced taxicabs, up to his elbows in oil and grease over an undetected knock in the engine, worn-out brakes, a sizzling radiator. Over in Mile End, Richie tried for work as a road digger, or a porter at Liverpool Street Station. He brought home money from this casual work on maybe one or two days each week.
Sadie learned to make a decent meal out of pork rind and bones, a few potatoes. When she heard that a child in the next tenement had died of diphtheria, she sat with her head in her hands. Measles was rife throughout February, so she stopped going down to the public baths for her twice-weekly scrub and soak, for fear of coming into contact with anything infectious.
Her sisters visited her, bringing little nightgowns and socks, in preparation for the baby. She refused all offers of help for herself, would accept neither food nor money. But she took the tiny clothes, white and sweet smelling, wrapped them in tissue paper and put them in the bottom drawer of her dressing-table. Health wise, the pregnancy was still difficult; her appetite was poor and she didn’t gain the expected weight. The baby, due in May, would be undersized, the doctor predicted. As time passed, Jess, Hettie and Frances would choose the time of their visits to avoid Richie, since he made it plain they weren’t welcome. They had the idea that he would get at Sadie for letting them come near, so they tried to miss him, letting Sadie keep her own counsel over their regular visits.
Occasionally they would drop Sadie’s name in Rob’s hearing, telling Amy how her pregnancy was progressing, how Sadie did he
r best under trying circumstances. ‘She keeps the place neat and clean, but it ain’t what you’d choose,’ Jess reported. In fact, her latest visit to Mile End had shocked her. Sadie tried to keep house in the two rooms, but the floors were bare and there was no easy-chair, let alone a sideboard for her few bits of crockery. As for Sadie herself, she’d lost her quick movement and lively eye. She seemed to have faded, she looked awkward and apathetic.
Amy was quite the opposite, Jess thought. Pregnancy suited her. There was a natural, peachy bloom on her cheeks, even in the dead of winter, a glow of energy and enthusiasm. Her over-neat, regimentally waved blonde hair had been allowed to soften into a longer style that framed her face.
‘Poor girl,’ Amy commiserated. She sat gratefully in the midst of her own nice things: a tatted rug from Annie, spare pots and pans from Jess, a sturdy table that Frances had passed on from the Institute. She’d hung lace curtains at the big picture window, and she’d got her way over the problem of the dirty green ceiling; it was now a warm cream colour, and Rob had papered the walls to match. Both families had rejoiced when they heard the news that Rob and Amy were expecting a baby, and a tactful veil was drawn over the date of its anticipated arrival.
‘Poor girl, nothing,’ Rob remonstrated. ‘She cooked her own goose, ain’t she?’ He hid his face behind his newspaper, checking the list of results for Palace’s score.
‘Still.’ Amy sighed. She shook her head at Jess. ‘You can’t help being sorry.’
Jess said they thought the baby might not be strong. ‘It’s underweight, see. They say it’s to do with how she lives. She don’t get much fresh air, and she don’t get out much for company, stuck way over there.’ She prodded her brother’s conscience as tar as she safely could.
‘Ain’t we lucky, though?’ Amy said softly. She gazed at the white woollen shawl which Jess had brought as a gift for their baby, so fine it was almost weightless, soft and warm when she held it to her cheek.
‘Luck ain’t nothing to do with where Sadie’s landed herself,’ Rob insisted. But he rattled his paper and sounded uncomfortable. ‘Palace drew nil-nil,’ he said by way of diversion.
Amy gave Jess a lighter glance. He was cracking. On her way out, she predicted that Rob would soon see reason.
Jess went from Amy’s back to Annie’s house to collect the children. There were signs of spring, even down Paradise Court: a lighter, longer feel to the afternoon, a general lifting of people’s spirits. She said hello to Dolly, stopped for a proper word with Charlie, asking after his prospects. She was glad they didn’t seem to hold things against her, but was still ashamed of what Maurice had done.
‘I ain’t sure yet what I’m gonna do,’ Charlie told her. ‘I’ve been thinking things through. There’s America, the land of opportunity. I’ve been thinking of that.’
Down the corridor, Dolly dusted door-handles and banged vigorously about.
‘Your ma don’t sound too happy about that,’ Jess said.
‘Pie in the sky,’ Dolly shouted. ‘Pie in the bleeding sky!’
Jess smiled. ‘What else, Charlie? If you don’t get to America?’ She wondered if that was what he was cut out for, the pioneer life, making his way in a foreign country.
‘I been thinking of college,’ he confided.
‘Yes?’
‘I only been thinking of it. They say they need teachers. I might go and train as one.’ When he put it into words, he thought it sounded foolish; even more far-fetched than the American idea.
‘Very good,’ Jess nodded. ‘I’d say that’s more your cup of tea.’
Charlie looked surprised but pleased. ‘You on the level?’ He stood upright in the doorway, seeking her honest opinion.
‘I am. Training as a teacher would be a good thing, I’d say. Shall I ask Frances for you? She’ll know how to go about it.’
Gladly Charlie agreed. Here was someone with a bit of faith in him for a change. Both his ma and pa had scoffed at the idea of him going back to school. ‘Where’s the money in that?’ Arthur had been quick to point out. ‘Who puts the food in your mouth while you sit with your head stuck in a bleeding book?’
‘Maybe there’s a scholarship. Frances would know.’ Jess promised to find out. She went on down the court, pleased after all to have crossed paths with the Ogdens.
Grace was on the doorstep of Annie’s house, playing at marbles with Rosie O’Hagan, the second youngest girl. They rolled the coloured glass balls along the ground and chased after them with squeals and yells, encouraging them into the hole in the pavement which they’d chosen as their target. Jess watched as a ragged boy appeared from the tenement doorway, ran pell-mell down the street, snatched a handful of the girls’ marbles and leaped for the nearby street-lamp. He shinned up it in a flash, and perched on the crossbar out of reach.
Grace, hands on hips, looked at Rosie, then glared up at the boy. Then she hitched her skirt around her waist and promptly shinned up after him.
The boy waited until she grabbed hold of the iron crossbar, then cheekily swung himself down, leaving Grace stranded. But he’d reckoned without Rosie, who came at him like a whirlwind, diving for his pockets and the precious marbles. Grace swung and jumped to the ground. Between them, the two girls recovered their property and boxed the boy’s ears. They saw him off, tongues out, calling derisively after him.
When it was over, Jess came quietly by, casting a look of mild disapproval at her daughter. ‘That ain’t very ladylike.’ She frowned.
Grace pulled down her skirt. ‘And he weren’t no gentleman.’
Rosie giggled. ‘’Course not. That’s my brother, Patrick!’
Jess smiled. ‘Grace, don’t you go far,’ she warned. ‘We have to get back home soon.’ She knew Grace would pull a face and do her best to squeeze an extra few minutes out of the occasion. Smiling, she went inside to collect Mo and say goodbye to her pa and Annie.
Mo, too, was in seventh heaven. He lay flat on the carpet, face covered in chocolate, chugging his toy train between tracks Annie had sketched out for him on a long length of spare wallpaper. She’d drawn a station, a level-crossing, a signal-box, trees and houses. As Mo chugged the little metal train along, Duke played at station-master, signalman and passenger. He’d found a whistle in the sideboard drawer to add the right flavour to events. Mo blew it loudly while Annie stood by covering her ears.
‘Thank God you’re here,’ she said to Jess. ‘I ain’t never gonna be able to stop this train otherwise. They been round and round that track till I feel dizzy.’
Mo grinned and leaped up. ‘Grandpa’s the fireman, I’m the driver!’ He jumped clean over the railway track and landed at her feet. She picked him up to wipe his face.
‘I hope he ain’t been too much for you.’ Jess set Mo down and began to gather her things. ‘I know what he’s like.’
Duke tousled the boy’s hair. ‘He ain’t too much,’ he promised.
Jess smiled at him. ‘You’re looking better, Pa.’
‘His chest’s clear now the weather’s picked up.’ Annie gave her bulletin. ‘He’s eating better, and he can sleep through the night, propped on three pillows.’
‘Good, and you’re getting out and about?’
Duke shrugged.
‘Not enough.’ Annie frowned. ‘He won’t go near the Duke. It’s enough to upset anyone, when you see what they’ve gone and done to it. And, of course, you can’t get for without going past the old place, so he stays cooped up here a good deal.’
Jess nodded sadly.
‘Memories,’ Duke explained. ‘Happy memories.’ Inside his head, he could play the old pianola tunes, he could hear the warm hum of conversation, the clink of glasses. In his mind, he could still reach for the wooden pump-handle and pull the best pint around.
‘No one goes near, now Hill’s got the place,’ Annie insisted. ‘They all swear it was him dropped Duke in it. Arthur and Charlie, Joe, Tommy; they all go up to the Flag.’
‘Quite right.’ Jess pulled on h
er gloves and fixed her hair under her hat. Mo made for the front door to go and find his big sister. ‘Well, he can’t last long, if that’s the case.’
‘He gets a few in from Union Street and further off. The young ones. They hear the place has been done up and they pop in to take a look. But Hill don’t encourage regulars. He ain’t got the knack.’ Annie picked up the gossip from the market. The boycott of the pub was holding up. George had ditched his job and gone and found cellar work with the stretched landlord at the Hag. None of this did Duke much direct good, but it must hearten him to hear that Hill couldn’t make a go of the place.
At last Jess was ready to leave. ‘Chin up,’ she told her pa. She went and prised the children away from their playmates in the court, told them to wave goodbye, then walked them briskly up Duke Street to catch the tram to the Underground station. On the journey home, Mo sat and chugged his train across his knees, Grace counted and re-counted her pocketful of shiny coloured marbles. Jess stared out of the tram window, swaying to its pitch and jolt, aware of a mounting regret as she left behind the warren of East End streets, burrowed underground, and emerged into her genteel, leafy suburb, and turned the key to her; own beautiful, empty house.
Money was tight for Rob and Amy as they struggled through the winter, facing the harsh realities of married life after the artificial excitement of being engaged and married. Amy had plenty of time to reflect on the loss of her busy daily routine in the company of her department store pals; her naturally sociable nature found it hard to adapt to long days cooking and cleaning inside her own four walls, waiting for Rob to show up at the end of his day’s work, waiting for their baby to be born.
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