‘Good job you ain’t mentioned you’re with the Army,’ George joked. He tucked her hand inside his arm as they walked out through the yard.
‘I know.’ Hettie’s pledge wasn’t the ideal qualification for publican’s wife. She included this dilemma in her prayers, and sought time to consult with the Mission commandant over it. She felt it was a problem they would have to solve when and if the time ever came.
Maurice used the occasion of Hettie’s marriage to travel south and talk things over with Jess. They met up, for the first time in a month, almost as strangers, outside the Register Office, just in time for the short ceremony. He saw her from a distance, dressed in an elegant grey and silver outfit, with a neat brimmed hat tilted forward in the style of a man’s trilby. Mo and Grace were kitted out for the wedding in new fawn coats and shiny black shoes. He felt proud and lonely. Jess came forward to embrace him and they went in together.
‘I miss you,’ he told her, short and sweet. It was later that day, after they’d toasted the bride and groom, and Annie had shed tears of happiness. George had stood up and thanked them, and promised them he would move mountains to oust Bertie Hill and get Duke back where he belonged. Jess and Maurice had finally driven home to Ealing and got the two over-excited children to bed. Now he sat on the edge of their own bed, watching Jess unpin her hair.
She went and sat down beside him. ‘Yes, and the house ain’t the same without you coming home at night,’ she confessed. The rhythm of her day had changed, shifted out of balance. She missed the slow, unperceived build-up of expectation in the evening when she used to sit at her work, waiting for Maurice to arrive.
‘You mean that?’ He looked at her, his face drawn and miserable. His dark, strong features matched Jess’s own rich colouring.
She stroked his cheek and nodded, ‘Anyhow, you ain’t got time to miss us that much. You’re too busy building your blessed picture palaces.’
‘Not twenty-four hours a day, I ain’t.’ He described his lodgings in a respectable Manchester suburb, which he shared with his landlady, Mrs Walters, her two Pekinese dogs, and her three other ‘gentlemen’.
Jess frowned. Her initial anger against him for reordering their universe without consultation hadn’t stood the test of separation. Already she was beginning to work around the obstacles, trying to talk the problem through with Hettie. But she often turned in ever-decreasing circles instead of coming up with any answers. ‘Ett says I gotta make up my own mind,’ she dropped into the conversation. ‘Only, with her being married to George now, I don’t reckon she’d want to take on the shop all by herself.’
‘But you’d give it up?’ he asked in surprise. He felt a surge of hope. During the lonely hours in his single bed, Maurice had convinced himself that Jess was more married to the shop than she was to him. He veered from sadness to bitterness, especially over his enforced separation from Grace and Mo. Being apart from them felt like an amputation, and he blamed Jess’s selfishness. But now he began to regret his own high-handedness, as he saw her struggling to come to a decision. ‘Come and live up north with me, and let’s be a family again!’
‘I can’t, Maurice. I just can’t!’
He gathered her to him and comforted her. ‘This is bleeding stupid,’ he whispered. He kissed her tears.
‘And you don’t hate me?’ she implored.
‘I love you, Jess. We can work this out. By Christmas, we’ll have come up with something, don’t you worry.’
The separation that had softened their anger sharpened their passion. They made love with uninhibited eagerness, rediscovering each intimacy afresh. He loved her softly curved breasts and hips. She clung to his broad, smooth shoulders, stroking the heel of her hand down his long, straight back.
Autumn loosened the leaves from the tree in the park and carpeted the grass golden-brown. A co-operative food and household goods department store opened on Coopers’ old premises. Tommy O’Hagan fulfilled his boast by opening a paint and wallpaper section in the basement. He soon began to walk out with, one of the pretty new shop girls, Moira Blackstone, attracted by her dark auburn hair and quick smile.
Dolly offered firm advice. ‘Don’t have nothing to do with that bleeding traitor,’ she told a bewildered Moira, accosting her on the street outside the Prince of Wales. Moira stood waiting for Tommy, dressed in a soft-brimmed velvet hat and a matching dark blue coat. ‘They should lock Tommy O’Hagan up and throw away the key for what he’s done.’
Moira was startled. She’d only started work on the co-op cheese counter that Monday, and was immediately swept off her feet by Tommy’s lively flattery. ‘Why, what’s he gone and done?’ She clutched her coat tight to her throat and looked the length of the street for a means of escape.
Dolly got into her full stride. ‘It ain’t just me that says so. Annie thinks the same. He ain’t fit to speak to. We all give him the cold shoulder these days; ain’t no decent, self-respecting body will give him the time of day!’ Her chin disappeared into folds of indignant flesh.
‘He ain’t gone and robbed a bank, has he?’ Moira’s imagination ran wild. Tommy didn’t look like a bank robber, with his ready grin and sparkling grey eyes. But there must be something behind Dolly’s account.
She snorted. ‘Worse. He good as killed Duke Parsons!’
Moira gasped. ‘Oh, my!’
‘Yes. Might as well stick the knife straight in his back and get it over with.’ She looked daggers at the sign over the pub door. ‘I expect he’ll take you in here for a quick drink before he takes you to the pictures?’
The girl shook her head. ‘I ain’t gonna go with him, after all. You say he as good as killed someone?’ She backed away, stepping down into the gutter and searching in her bag for coins for the tram home. She feared she’d spotted Tommy leaving the co-op and heading up the street.
‘That’s what I call it. Helping to fill Bertie Hill’s till is the same as signing Duke’s death warrant. If he takes you in here for a drink, he’s a dirty, rotten traitor, tell him.’ Dolly seized Moira’s arm and drew her on to the pavement. ‘Tell him from me, if we don’t get Hill out by Christmas, the old man won’t make it through another winter. Just you tell him that!’ She, too had spied Tommy, who whistled as he approached.
She left a breathless Moira to convey the message, refusing to lower herself to speak to him in person.
‘Fancy a drop of something before we see the flick?’ he suggested cheerily.
Moira stared at him. ‘Here?’ She pointed over her shoulder at the shiny new doors.
‘No. Up at the Flag.’ He linked arms, surprised by her stiffness. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong, is there?’
She took a deep breath. ‘No. The Lamb and Hag, you say?’ From what she could work out from Dolly’s garbled story, visiting the Lamb and Flag didn’t amount to a crime against the realm. For the minute, Tommy’s treachery seemed to have receded. ‘Right you are,’ she agreed, relaxing into things.
But he’d lulled her suspicions with a decoy. After a drink at the Flag, they went down to the Gem to see the new Chaplin film, then Tommy brought her back up Duke Street and waltzed her straight through the doors of the Prince of Wales.
‘A pint of best and a glass of port,’ he ordered. He stood chatting at the bar with Jack Cooper, while Moira shrank into a corner.
There was only a handful of customers in the pub, two young lads from the tea and coffee counter at the co-op new to the area like her, and an older, red-faced man with a stained waistcoat and a battered trilby hat. Much later a young man came in. Tommy was already on to his third drink. The young man scowled at her and went and slammed his money on to the bar. ‘Give me a pint, Bert,’ he ordered, without lifting his head in greeting.
She saw Tommy frown. Then he went up to the newcomer. ‘How’s tricks, Richie?’ she heard him say.
The reply was mumbled. Soon Tommy left the bar and came to rejoin Moira. ‘Bleeding cheerful charlie, he is.’ He took a gulp from his glass. ‘I bet he ain’t
mentioned to Sadie that he uses this as his watering-hole neither!’
‘I don’t like this place,’ Moira whispered. ‘It ain’t friendly. Can’t we go?’
Tommy ignored her. ‘From what I hear, Richie and Rob still don’t get on like a house on fire down at the depot. Walter’s had to break up more than one row already.’ He shook his head. ‘Even I wouldn’t have the brass neck to turn up here, not after what Hill done to Sadie, see. It don’t seem right.’
‘Let’s go, Tommy.’ Her evening was turning sour. She didn’t understand what everyone had against the place: it was lovely and new, with posh electric lights and a brand-new, patterned carpet.
Tommy glanced at his watch. ‘We can’t. Not yet,’ he replied. ‘We gotta hang on a bit longer.’
Moira sat in the silent, almost empty bar, miserably sipping her port wine. This would be the last time she came out with Tommy O’Hagan, she decided. He ignored a girl’s wishes, and he drank too much. She sulked as she watched him go unsteadily to the bar for his fifth pint of beer.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tommy’s turncoat activities, relayed loud and clear to Annie by Dolly, were out of character. ‘What’s he up to?’ Annie frowned and slapped her bread dough on to a floured board. ‘It ain’t like young Tommy to let the street down.’
Duke had heard the rumours too: Tommy was turning into a regular at the Prince of Wales. He seemed to prefer late-night drinking sessions there to keeping in with his old pals. But Duke didn’t want to get involved. The days were drawing in, there was another long, idle winter ahead. He would fashion wooden toys for his new grandchildren and potter about the house as general handyman, while Annie braved the weather out on the market stall. ‘Mr Baldwin’s warning against an all-out strike.’ He read the headline news in the evening paper. ‘He wants to set up a royal commission on the miners, and much good may it do them.’ He sniffed.
Annie thumped and pummelled her dough! The sweet, yeasty smell filled the kitchen: ‘You ain’t listening to a word I say. I’m telling you, Tommy O’Hagan’s up to something. He’s a cheeky little bleeder, always has been, but there ain’t a bad bone in his body. No, if he’s taken to lining Bertie Hill’s pockets, it’s gotta be for a good reason.’ She scooped the dough back into the earthenware bowl, covered it with a linen cloth and set it by the range to rise a second time.
Still Duke ignored her. ‘Here’s an advertisement for an electric ignition set for motor cars. I’ll let Rob know about that. Maybe he can get Richie to fit it to the old Bullnoses. And listen, if there’s a general strike over the miners, what’s the betting they just bring in the troops to keep things moving? The miners ain’t got a chance, poor bleeders.’ He grumbled on as he took a small pair of scissors and cut out the clipping to show his son.
Annie lost patience and began to clatter about at the sink. You ain’t gonna make things no better by hiding your head in the sand,’ she warned. ‘I think you should pay some mind to what people round here do for you, trying to get shut of that nasty piece of work at the pub.’
He sighed. ‘You think I ain’t grateful?’
‘No, I know you are.’ Annie softened her tone and turned to face him. She dried her hands on a towel. ‘I’m sorry for going on about it, Duke. Only, young Tommy’s gone and got my goat, unless he is hiding something up his sleeve.’
He nodded. They were friends again, when they heard the latch of the front door open.
‘That’ll be Ernie calling in for his tea,’ Annie said. She had the first batch of loaves in the oven, and there was a calm, warm feel to the room.
Ernie came in, his face red with cycling, the feeling of autumn wind about him, as he stuffed his cap into his pocket and came to sit by the fire, Annie swung the kettle on to the hob, cheered by Ernie’s smiles.
Then there was a knock. Duke went and answered the door to George. ‘You’re just in time for a cuppa.’ He led him into the kitchen. ‘I think Annie’s knocking together some scones. Come in, come in.’
The tall cellarman stooped his head as he went down into the kitchen and squeezed his large frame into a seat at the table, opposite Duke.
Annie made a great fuss of her new son-in-law. He and Hettie were just setting up nicely in rooms down Meredith Court. Because of his size and occupation, she made frequent comparisons between him and Duke at a young age; both built on a large scale, both correct in manner, but with hearts of gold. She made sure he had plenty of melting butter on his warm, home-made scones. They discussed the price of cheese at the new co-op. George told Ernie to look out for the forthcoming match between Palace and Bury. He sat there, passing the time of day, without a sign of there being anything unusual in his visit.
But, just as he picked up his cap to go, he cleared his throat and made an announcement. ‘I came to give you a bit of good news,’ he said quietly.
Annie, who was tapping out loaves on to a cooling tray, looked up sharply. ‘Hettie ain’t expecting already?’
George blushed. ‘Give us a chance, Annie. No, it ain’t that.’ He turned to Duke, reluctant as ever to make long speeches, unsure how to deliver the news. ‘We thought you’d like to know. Tommy O’Hagan brought in the coppers to the Prince of Wales last night. They caught Bertie Hill serving after hours.’
The news sank in. Ernie caught the word ‘coppers’ and assumed something bad had happened. He looked at Annie, who was standing face flushed, open-mouthed and speechless. Duke sat still as a statue.
‘It seems Tommy reckoned the old boycott was getting a bit long-winded. It was only grinding Hill down slowly, and Tommy wanted action. You know how he is.’
‘I’ll bleeding kill him!’ Annie found her tongue at last. ‘Leading us up the garden path, and all along he was working to get Hill out. Dolly will go spare with him.’
George was puzzled. ‘You don’t reckon she’ll be glad to see the back of Hill?’
Annie tutted. ‘’Course she bleeding well will. We all will. But she’ll skin him alive for not letting on. You know Dolly, she likes to be in the thick of things.’ She went over to Duke and put an arm around his shoulder. ‘You hear that? Tommy’s a bleeding hero!’
George filled the silence by explaining in detail to Ernie, ‘Everything worked out fine. The police will get Hill into court for breaking the law over hours, see. Hill will be out on his ear, thanks to Tommy. He didn’t let anyone in on his little plan because he didn’t want the word to get back to Hill. Once he got the evidence that he was serving after hours regular, he got the coppers in. They came last night and closed the place down, no messing. And you know something? Tommy ain’t breathed a word to no one about the part he played. It was Dolly. She saw the pub locked up and set about finding out from the brewery what was up. Word leaked out about an hour ago.’
Ernie nodded. His face lit up. ‘Does this mean we can all go home, then?’
Annie quickly came and gave him a hug. ‘No, I’m afraid it don’t, Em. It’s good news to get Hill out. But it don’t mean we can all go back.’
Again George cleared his throat. ‘Now, don’t go raising your hopes too high,’ he warned. ‘But Hettie and me, we got our name down with the brewery. And if we get the licence, we want you and Annie and Ernie to move right back in with us. Ett said to come over and tell you straight away. I telephoned her at the shop when I heard Hill was out. She said to tell you we was in with a chance.’
‘And you let us sit here drinking tea and talking about football as if nothing had happened?’ Annie advanced on George in mock outrage. ‘Why, you and Tommy O’Hagan, the pair of you, I could . . . why, I don’t know what I could do!’ Speechless, she flung her arms around George’s neck.
Slowly Duke stood up and walked to the door. He shook his head. ‘Thanks, son.’ There was a catch in his voice as he turned away.
George shot a look at Annie. ‘I ain’t upset him, have I?’
‘No, you just made his dream come alive again.’ Her own voice choked. ‘Go and see him, George. I’l
l wait here with Ernie.’ She blew her nose and set to, refilling the kettle at the tap. ‘Come on, Ern, wash these few pots before you get back to work. Look lively.’
George followed Duke into the front parlour. Annie’s aspidistra stood in its round, glazed pot in the window. The cream lace curtains hung in neat folds. A marble-cased clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Duke sat himself in an upright chair beside the polished, empty grate.
‘We ain’t got the place, not yet.’ George stood awkwardly at the door, holding the peak of his cap in both hands. ‘But we gotta be high on their list. I got experience, and I know my way around the old place. With Hill out of the way, Ett thought I should let you know how things stood.’
Duke looked across the room at him. He tried to clear his throat. ‘You’re a good lad, George. Thanks.’
He nodded. ‘I’d best be on my way then.’ He was uncomfortable for the old man. Sometimes hope was harder to bear than defeat. ‘Ett says she’ll come over after she finishes at work.’
At first, Duke didn’t answer. Then he made an effort to get to his feet. He came to shake hands. ‘Let me tell you something, George. I don’t mind telling you, there ain’t much left in life for an old man like me. But if there’s one thing that would make everything right before I die, it’s to end my days in the old Duke of Wellington.’ He clasped the younger man’s hand between his own and shook it. ‘Now, if it don’t turn out that way, it ain’t for the want of trying, and I’ll die thankful for all you done. You and the whole family. The whole street.’ His eyes filled up as he released George’s hand.
Grudgingly Dolly had to admit that Tommy was the hero of the hour. Not a soul spared an ounce of pity for Bertie Hill, who took to his room in the tenement, having failed to persuade his ex-colleagues in the police force to let him stay open at the Prince of Wales until the case came to court. The brewery moved in quickly to sack him, and let it be known that the pub would re-open under new management just as soon as possible. They wanted to settle things quickly, before lucrative Christmas trade was lost. Now the whole of Paradise Court had to keep their fingers crossed for George Mann.
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