Perhaps she should just tell her mum before anyone else had the chance. Get it over with and stop the torment.
She could just picture it: there they’d be, sitting at the kitchen table and she’d say – ‘I’m sorry that Dad’s still away, Mum. Aw, by the way, I’ve been seeing this boy. For quite a while now. Simon, his name is. What’s that? Why haven’t I told you before? Aw, he’s Jewish, see. More tea?’
Maybe it would be for the best. Anyway, what could her mum do, kill her? She probably would, knowing her. And the fact that it had been going on for so long – a year now, when she thought about it – hardly made it any easier. It was like having a job to do and leaving it because you didn’t fancy getting down to starting it, and then it got worse and worse, and bigger and bigger, and, before you knew where you were, you’d never be capable of even trying to tackle it.
Molly rubbed her hands over her face, groaning to herself, as though she were suffering eternal torment. She rolled on to her side and stared at the wall. She remembered staring at the wallpaper when she was a little girl. The big cabbage roses that she had thought were so pretty were always the last things she had seen at night before she closed her eyes and drifted off into the easy, innocent sleep of childhood, the sort of sleep that came when you hadn’t a care in the world to disturb you. The roses had faded over the years and were now the palest of pinks.
Briefly her mind wandered and she imagined what it would be like to be able to afford new wallpaper – just because you felt like it. She felt a tear trickle out of the corner of her eye and run down towards her ear. But she wasn’t crying for faded wallpaper, she was crying for faded dreams.
With a supreme effort, she hoisted herself up on to her elbows and sniffed loudly. She couldn’t carry on like this. She had to do something, and she knew exactly what it was. She would go down to the front room, dig out the writing paper from the sideboard, and write Simon a letter, putting an end to her misery once and for all. It was either that or drive herself crazy.
As she ran down the stairs, her energy restored a little along with her decision to put her life in order, she heard voices coming from the kitchen. Thank goodness the writing paper was in the front room, she thought as she pushed open the door. She must look a right state, all red-eyed and snivelling.
‘What d’you want?’
Molly froze. The angry question had hit her like a brick wall.
It was Danny. He and Liz were squashed together on one of the front room armchairs having a cuddle.
‘Sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I didn’t realise anyone was in here, Dan.’
‘Blimey, Moll,’ he went on, sighing dramatically, ‘it’s bad enough the two little ’uns peeping round the door and giggling whenever me and Liz wanna be a bit private.’ He wriggled around, making a bit of space and somehow managed to shove his hand into his trouser pocket. He brought out a fistful of coppers and held them out to his sister. ‘Tell yer what, Moll,’ he said, with a wink at Liz, ‘here’s a sprazey to go to the flicks, so’s me and Liz can get a bit of peace. Yer could go and see that Tom Mix in Cement.’
‘Very funny,’ snapped Molly. ‘I ain’t never heard that one before. How on earth d’yer think of ’em?’
Trying to regain a bit of dignity, Liz pulled her skirt down over her knees, nudged Danny hard in the side, and clambered up from the armchair.
‘Why don’t you leave her alone, Dan?’ she said quietly, her pretty eyes flashing warnings at him. ‘You don’t have to be so sarcy, do yer? Can’t yer see she’s upset?’ She went over and stood beside her friend, gently touching her on the arm. ‘What’s up, Moll? It’s yer dad, ain’t it?’
Molly shook her away. ‘Yer don’t have to worry yerself about me, Liz.’ She stepped backwards out of the room and pulled the door shut behind her.
As she stumbled along the passage towards the kitchen, her vision blurred by yet more tears, she could hear Liz telling Danny his fortune in no uncertain terms. She gave up a silent prayer of thanks. At least Liz was still on her side and protecting her secret – for now anyway.
Molly almost skidded to a halt when she reached the kitchen doorway and saw that her mum and nanna were in there getting ready to dish up the tea.
Nora turned round to see who was there. ‘Whatever’s the matter?’ she asked, dropping the cutlery with a loud clatter on to the draining board and rushing over to her granddaughter. ‘Who’s upset yer, darling?’
Molly bit her lip, not daring to speak for fear of breaking down into uncontrollable sobs. She turned round, and ran back upstairs to her room.
‘I don’t like it, Katie,’ Nora said, looking along the passage as though she could still see her granddaughter.
‘What’s that then?’ Katie asked as she set down the plates on the table. She didn’t look up and her voice was distant.
‘Molly. There’s something wrong with her.’
‘There’s something wrong with every one of this family,’ Katie said flatly.
‘I don’t understand you.’ Nora was angry. ‘The girl’s got a problem and you just stand there.’
Katie spun round and faced her mother. ‘I’ve got problems too, yer know.’
‘Katie, I know yer have, love.’
‘No yer don’t. Yer don’t know nothing.’
Nora walked slowly across the little room and stood in front of her daughter. ‘You need some sleep. There’s dark rings under them pretty eyes o’ your’n.’ She reached out and brushed a heavy stray curl of thick auburn hair away from her daughter’s forehead. ‘He’ll be back, love. I know he will.’
14
BY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, Molly was glad that Danny and Liz had been in the front room; it had given her the chance to think more carefully about whether she should write to Simon after all. And she had eventually come to the decision that she shouldn’t. She was still going to finish with him, but, with him meaning so much to her, she wasn’t going to be a coward, she was going to tell him to his face.
But as she neared the corner of Jubilee Street, where they had arranged to meet, Molly was already worked up into a real state as to how, now the time had come, she was actually going to tell him that it was over.
She was close enough to see Simon clearly: he was standing, arms folded, watching for her to come along Commercial Road.
When he caught sight of her, he levered himself away from the wall and started walking quickly towards her, a relieved smile on his handsome face.
She dreaded the moment when that smile would vanish.
‘I always imagine you won’t turn up,’ he began, ‘like that other time.’
There, it had happened, his smile had disappeared.
‘Molly? What’s wrong?’
‘There’s something I gotta say to yer, Simon. Mind if we go and sit down somewhere?’
‘All right,’ he agreed uneasily. ‘Let’s go and find a coffee shop.’
They walked along in the direction of Aldgate until they found a café that was open.
Already uncomfortably warm from walking in the strong afternoon sun, Molly felt as though she would melt as she stepped through the narrow doorway into the close atmosphere of the tiny crowded room. Like many of the cafés in that area, it was full of elderly men, many of them Jewish, shouting and arguing about politics and all claiming that only they had the true solution as to how to put the world to rights, while they drank their way through gallons of steaming black tea and coffee.
‘I don’t know if this was such a good idea,’ she said nervously, realising how much harder it was going to be to talk to Simon surrounded by an audience. But he had already found them a seat.
‘Mind if we share your table?’ Simon asked a grey-haired man who was loudly hectoring his equally noisy companion.
The man didn’t look round, he just pulled out the chair next to him and carried on speaking at full volume to the other man.
Simon beckoned Molly over from the doorway and then went to the counter to get them some tea, while
she settled herself uneasily next to the man.
‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.
Simon gave Molly her drink and sat down opposite her. Even though the tea was scalding hot, Molly sipped at it, preferring to burn her tongue rather than use it to speak the words that she knew would choke her.
‘So what is it you have to say to me?’ Simon was trying to make light of it, but it was obvious that he was worried. ‘Is it about your father?’
She shook her head, her eyes fixed on the bare wooden table top. ‘No. It’s not me dad, it’s us. I ain’t gonna see yer no more.’
‘No. We’ve gone through it all before. I’ve told you, I won’t listen to you when you talk like this.’
Still Molly couldn’t meet his gaze. ‘A year we’ve been carrying on like this, Simon,’ she told the table top. ‘I don’t want it no more. I wanna normal, straightforward life like Lizzie and Danny’s. I wanna walk along the street and not be afraid to be seen with me boyfriend.’
Simon reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Come out with me tomorrow. It’s Bank Holiday, we can spend the whole day together.’
‘I was gonna write to yer,’ she said, as though she hadn’t heard him, ‘but I reckoned it’d be better if I told yer to yer face.’
‘So why don’t you?’
She looked up at him. ‘Why don’t I what?’
‘Tell me to my face.’
Molly hesitated for just a moment then said, ‘I ain’t gonna see yer no more.’
‘I’m not listening to this. I’ll be waiting for you by the foot tunnel, this side of the river, tomorrow, twelve o’clock.’
‘I won’t be there. I—’ Molly felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked round. It was the elderly man sitting next to her.
‘So why’re you doing this to the poor boy?’ the man asked. ‘Can’t you see how much he thinks of you?’
Molly stood up, sending her chair crashing to the floor. ‘I’m sorry,’ she sobbed and ran from the café.
Simon stood up to follow her but the man stretched across the table and pulled him down again. ‘You’ve got a lot to learn about women, son,’ he said. ‘Now you sit there and finish your tea. Let her cool her heels a bit. Then go after her.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Women, who does understand ’em? Not me. But I know it doesn’t do to try and reason with ’em when they’ve got an idea stuck in their heads.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t worry. You can pop round her house later on. Give her a nice big kiss.’ He smiled, his old face crinkling into folds and layers of olive-coloured skin. ‘And when you do, give her a kiss from me as well. She’s a good-looking girl you’ve got there.’
Simon couldn’t even begin to explain to the man how impossible any of that would be.
Molly was out of breath but still she kept running. She had to get away before Simon caught up with her. She had done it at last and she had to be strong.
She was just about to cross Back Church Lane, pausing only to glance hurriedly left and right to make sure it was safe to do so, when what she saw, at the top of a narrow alley leading behind the houses, was enough to stop her dead in her tracks. A crowd of young men were blocking the way of an elderly man, taunting him as he tried to get past them.
She watched, frozen to the spot, as one of the jeering crowd shoved the old man hard in the chest, sending him sprawling backwards along the alley. It wasn’t only the brutality that shocked her, it was the fact that she recognised them as the gang that Danny had been knocking around with when he was still mates with Bob Jarvis.
One of them darted forward and grabbed the battered shopping bag that the old man had been carrying, holding it up to his mates as though it was a glorious trophy. He looked inside it and sneered. ‘Bloody muck,’ he said, tipping out bagels and ajar of rollmop herrings from the bag and into the gutter behind him. ‘Why can’t yer eat proper food?’
Another man moved forward; with a jerk of his thumb, he signalled for the others to get back and give him more room.
‘Leave him to me,’ he snarled. ‘The stinking old Jewish bastard.’
Without further warning, he started slamming his boot into the defenceless man’s side, kicking at him with such brutality, that the elderly man’s body jerked around as though he was a marionette being worked by a drunken puppeteer.
Molly could stand back no longer. She started running along the street towards them without even a thought as to what use a seventeen-year-old girl would be against a mob of frenzied thugs in a narrow alley.
But before she reached them, one of the gang had started shouting for the attacker to stop.
‘Not in broad daylight!’ he yelled, grabbing at the man’s jacket. ‘Are you barmy?’ He turned to the others. ‘Give me a hand to pull him off, for Christ’s sake, before someone hears and calls the rozzers.’
It took three of them finally to drag him off and two of them to keep hold of him as, panting and sweating with excitement at what he had done, he strained to get back to finish off the old man.
‘You bloody bastards!’ hollered Molly, looking around desperately for someone to help her.
The man who had shouted at the attacker darted a nervous look over his shoulder. ‘Shit! There’s only a sodding girl over there been watching us. Let’s get out of here. Quick, come on! Move!’
Apart from the one who had been dragged off of the old man, they all poured out of the alley and ran off along Back Church Lane in the direction of Cable Street. The attacker himself, however, was far more cool; he turned round slowly, interested to see what sort of a girl would dare challenge him.
When his eyes met Molly’s it was difficult to assess which of them was the more surprised: the man when he realised that the girl was Molly Mehan, or Molly when she realised that the brute was none other than Bob Jarvis.
It took only a moment for Jarvis to regain his composure. He lifted his chin and looked down his nose at Molly. ‘Ain’t seen yer around for a while,’ he said, as casually as though he had just bumped into her during the Saturday night Monkey Parade.
Molly didn’t answer him, she simply walked over to the nearest front door and hammered on it with her knuckles, not stopping until a young boy came to see what she wanted. Jarvis was still watching her, an amused grin on his face, as she spoke to the child.
‘Tell yer mum yer’ve gotta run down the nick as fast as yer legs can carry yer,’ she told him. ‘Yer’ve gotta fetch a copper ’cos an old man’s been hurt. And make sure yer tell ’em we need an ambulance and all. Understand?’
The boy nodded, but, thrilled by the idea of a bit of excitement, he ignored Molly’s instruction to tell his mother, and instead took off along the street at a gallop – the first time he had ever willingly run towards the police station in Leman Street.
‘What? Turn on yer own, would yer?’ Bob sneered. ‘I never had yer down for that sort. If yer know what’s good for yer, yer wanna clear off before the law gets here and starts asking questions.’ With that he gave Molly a raised hand, stiff-armed fascist salute and trotted off after his mates.
Molly felt sick at the thought that she had once let somebody so vile actually touch her, but she couldn’t waste time on self-pity, she had to help the old man.
She took off her cotton cardigan, rolled it up and knelt down beside him. Suppressing her distaste for the metallic stench of the blood that was pouring from his nose and mouth and the stale ammonia smell of urine where he had wet himself during the attack, Molly gently moved his head, intending to slip the makeshift pillow between him and the hard cobbled floor of the alley.
His eyes flicked open in terror as she touched him.
‘It’s all right,’ she soothed him, as though she was a mother reassuring a frightened child. ‘I ain’t gonna hurt yer, I promise. I’m just gonna make yer a bit more comfy till the police get here, that’s all.’
He screwed his eyes tight and his face contorted as a new wave of agony surged through his body.
�
�What’s going on?’ asked someone behind Molly.
She looked over her shoulder. It was a woman of about her mum’s age.
‘Some slag kicked this poor old man in the guts,’ Molly said.
The woman shook her head. ‘Bastard,’ she said, picking up the discarded shopping bag and the bagels. She kicked the shards of glass from the shattered herring jar down the grid over the drain and then knelt down beside Molly. ‘Aw, Gawd love him,’ she said, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘It’s only poor old Mr Zuckerman. They’ve been having a go at the poor old bugger for weeks now. Been torturing him, they have.’
Mr Zuckerman groaned and a thin trickle of blood ran from his ear.
‘He’s in a bad way,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll run and fetch the doctor.’
Molly took a deep breath to steady herself, then shuffled sideways on her knees so that she could rest the man’s head on her lap – anything to try and ease the pain he was suffering. ‘It’s all right,’ she said, using the hem of her dress to staunch the blood. ‘Some kid’s gone already.’
Molly had never seen anyone die before, but she knew, even before the policeman arrived and could confirm it, that Mr Zuckerman was dead. And she also knew what she had to do. She had been born and bred in a community where it was accepted that people didn’t grass on one another, but this was different; she couldn’t allow Bob Jarvis to get away with it.
When the ambulance had taken Mr Zuckerman away, and the crowd that had gathered to watch and pass comment had finally dispersed, Molly braced herself to speak to the policeman.
She not only gave him details of everything she had seen, but she also identified the person who had done it. Yes, she assured the officer, she was sure his name was Bob Jarvis, she had heard the others call him that.
When the policeman said that it was a bit strange, them using his full name, Molly had become flustered, but luckily the policeman put it down to shock, and said that who knew how thugs like that would act.
When the officer asked for her name and address, Molly stumbled over her words again in her efforts to make up something convincing. The last thing she wanted was for the police to turn up in Plumley Street asking all sorts of difficult questions. And anyway, how could she have admitted that she had once been the girlfriend of such a creature?
Just Around the Corner Page 31