She was wearing a fitted barathea dress, probably more suited to an evening on the town than to sitting around in a shabby bedsit, but at least it was clean. She had also wiped off her old coating of make-up and had applied a new brighter layer of powder and paint. It was still far too heavy for Cissie’s taste but at least it looked better than the streaks and smudges Eileen had sported earlier. And her hair actually looked quite nice. She had caught it back and tied it with a scarf in a big loose bow with the ends trailing over one shoulder.
She’d probably been quite a looker in her day, mused Cissie as she warily took up her seat on the now tidily made-up bed.
Eileen also seemed happier, more relaxed. Watching her pick up a lipstick-stained glass and a half-bottle of gin from the bedside table, before settling down contentedly on the now cleared single armchair, Cissie thought she could guess why.
‘I like all my callers to bring me little presents,’ Eileen explained, filling the glass to its brim and then knocking back the contents in a single gulp.
Cissie fumbled around, clumsily retrieving her bag from by her feet, and then stood up. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I told yer before, I’m broke.’
Eileen threw back her head and laughed, an unexpectedly girlish and attractive sound. ‘Hark at you! I didn’t mean lady callers, did I? Sit yerself back down. Go on.’
She reached out and gently patted Cissie’s arm encouragingly. ‘Anyway, even if I did mean lady callers, I wouldn’t take nothing off you, now would I? I like you. You remind me of meself when I was a few years younger.’
Cissie did as she was told and sat down, nervously joining in with the laughter.
‘Drink?’ asked Eileen.
Cissie declined.
‘Suit yourself.’ Eileen shrugged and carefully refilled her own glass with straight gin. ‘Now, you wanted names, that right?’
Cissie leant forward eagerly, her reservations about Eileen vanishing rapidly. Here was what she was after. ‘Yeah, that’s right. I need to know who to buy flowers from, so I can stock the stall without getting conned.’
Eileen took two cigarettes from the packet on the arm of her chair and handed one to Cissie, but she didn’t offer a match, she waited until Cissie took out her lighter.
Her cigarette lit, Eileen inhaled deeply, then, jabbing it in the air to emphasise her words, she began speaking with surprising solemnity. ‘I’m gonna tell you something, Cissie Flowers, and I don’t want you blabbing yer mouth off to no one that it was me what told yer. I want you to keep shtum. Understand?’
Cissie nodded in ready agreement, although, in truth, she didn’t understand why on earth Eileen should think that telling her the name of a decent wholesaler should be such a big secret. Apart from the fact, of course, that Eileen was getting herself well and truly plastered again, and was talking the same nonsense spouted by any street-corner drunk at closing time.
She could have kicked herself for not having returned earlier, before Eileen had the chance to start hitting the bottle again. It would have been worth taking the chance that she would still be with her ‘friend’. But how was she to know Eileen’s drinking habits? And anyway, it was too late for regrets, Eileen had already swallowed a good third of the bottle and was pouring herself yet another measure.
‘Right, that’s all right then,’ Eileen continued. ‘Now, like I said, I like the look of you, Cissie. That’s why I’m gonna help yer.’ She smiled happily and raised her glass in an exaggerated toast. ‘Trouble is, darling,’ she sighed, ‘I ain’t got a sodding clue about no flower markets, or who could tell you where yer should buy yer flowers neither for that matter.’
Cissie dropped her chin and stared down miserably at the ragged bedside rug. Another waste of time. It wasn’t fair, all she wanted to know was where she could buy a few bloody flowers. Mind you, at the moment she would have settled for just getting out of there. But she wasn’t that stupid, she knew she’d have to be careful about taking her leave. Cissie might have had an easy, protected life being married to Davy, but she’d been brought up in a tough enough neighbourhood. She’d learnt from an early age that drunks could turn from smiling sentimentality to aggressive fury in the time it took to unscrew the top off another bottle of light ale.
‘It don’t matter,’ Cissie muttered.
‘Yes it does,’ Eileen said matter-of-factly. ‘That’s why I’m gonna tell yer what yer can do to sort yerself out.’
‘Yeah?’ Cissie, suddenly alert, looked up hopefully. ‘What’s that then?’
Eileen kicked off her shoes and draped her bare legs over the arm of her chair. ‘You just get yourself down that market, wherever it is, and you mention Big Bill Turner, darling. No one’ll dare try and have you over then.’
The disappointment stung so badly that Eileen might just as well have slapped Cissie’s face for her. She stood up, not caring any longer whether she offended Eileen or not. ‘Thanks for your time,’ she snapped briskly. ‘You’ve been a real help.’
Eileen, who was considerably taller and heavier than Cissie, was now also standing.
‘Gawd help us, you’re worse than a bleed’n Jack-in-the-box. I ain’t even started helping you yet. Sit yerself back on that bed,’ she insisted. ‘Go on.’
Feeling she had very little option, Cissie sat back down again, but she paid no attention to what Eileen was saying – she was too busy wondering why she had ever thought Eileen could help her in the first place, and what had then possessed her to return to this filthy little room and become trapped into listening to the irrational rantings of a raddled old tom.
But then something she said made Cissie sit up and listen. Eileen might have been rambling, but what she was saying infuriated Cissie. She couldn’t let her get away with this, drunk or not.
‘Are you suggesting that my Davy was involved with Turner in some way?’ she demanded. ‘Cos if you are—’
Eileen winked and flashed Cissie a lopsided grin. ‘Calm yerself down, girl. I never actually said that in so many words, now did I? I only sort of said how it’s interesting how much money your Davy managed to make from running that flower stall of his.’ She pointed to Cissie’s hand and smirked. ‘Look at that bleed’n lighter for a start.’
Cissie turned the lighter over and over in her hands, examining it as though she had never seen it before. ‘What about it?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Let’s just say it ain’t exactly made out o’ brass, now is it?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No,’ Eileen said with an ironic laugh, ‘I don’t think you do. But there’s something you’d better understand.’
‘What’s that?’
‘As far as Turner’s concerned, and I ain’t talking about no business now—’
‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ Cissie interrupted her angrily. ‘And I don’t reckon you do neither.’
‘There’s no need to take that tone.’ Eileen sounded menacing.
‘Sorry.’ Cissie was quick to apologise.
Eileen had not only finished off the gin, but was steadily drinking her way through a bottle of vicious-looking green stuff that she’d dug out from the pile of dirty laundry stuffed behind her chair.
‘So you should be sorry and all. Now, I want you to listen to me, Cissie Flowers. I’m gonna mark yer card for yer about Big Bill Turner. And I don’t want you to breathe a word of it to no one.’
Cissie sat and listened; she had very little choice.
‘When I was a kid down Hoxton way, we was poor. Really poor. Not that it mattered really, cos we wasn’t no different from any other family round there. Being that poor was ordinary, see, dead ordinary. And we was just another ordinary family.’
Eileen took out another cigarette and tossed the packet to Cissie for her to help herself.
‘Then, one day, I must have been, what, sixteen? Well, that was when everything changed. See I heard my mum, my usually miserable, down-trodden mum, giggling away like a young girl. She was upstairs with the b
loke next door. She’d told me he’d come in to help her “mend the bed”, while me dad was out down the boozer. He was always down there – when he wasn’t indoors fighting and rowing with me mum. So hearing her sound so happy was a bit of a red-letter day for me. I wanted to see what was going on up there, didn’t I?’
Cissie, drawn into the story despite herself, had to ask: ‘You was sixteen and you didn’t know, you know, nothing about—’
Eileen flashed her eyebrows. ‘Funny innit? I didn’t have a clue. I wasn’t very grown up for me age, still a kid really. And my mum and me were never close enough to talk about things like that.’ She paused, lost for the moment in her distant past.
‘Anyway, so up I goes after ’em, with this great big stupid grin on me face, ready to join in. Well, when I threw open her bedroom door and…’ Eileen shrugged, dismissing the memory. ‘She beat me black and blue, didn’t she. I ran away from home that night. Started a new life on the streets.’
‘How did you manage?’
‘Not very well at first. Yer know, when I think back, it’s a miracle I never got done in. The chances I took!’ She laughed mirthlessly, shaking her head in wonder. ‘But I learnt. I had to. And there was plenty of other girls around to put me straight.’
Slowly and carefully, Eileen tapped the ash from her cigarette, using the tip to make a little mound with it in the ash-tray. She concentrated intently, as though it were of great importance that she got it right. When she was satisfied with her efforts, she continued speaking.
‘Then I met Bill. I was hanging around a pub up West, seeing if I could get anyone to treat me without wanting too much in return. Cos, believe it or not, I was still a virgin. I ain’t sure how I managed it, but I was. Well, he came in with this crowd of blokes. I went up to one of them and tried to cadge a drink. But all I got was a right mouthful. He started hollering and hooting, calling me a little whore. Wanted to look clever in front of the others, I suppose, but Bill wasn’t impressed,’ she said proudly. ‘He stuck up for me. And that was that, really.’
‘How d’yer mean?’
‘He took me in.’ She looked away, avoiding Cissie’s gaze. ‘Or should I say he took me on?’ she added under her breath.
‘To his house?’
Eileen shook her head. ‘No. He was married to Moe even then. She might have started out as just a chorus girl in one of his clubs, but once she had her fat legs under Bill’s table she thought she was a sodding princess. Rules that man she does. But he told me he loved me not her. And I believed him. I had to. I had to believe someone loved me. It was just a shame I wasn’t clever enough to realise I was one of many. One in a very long line. Maybe if when me mum had hit me I’d have gone to a friend, who knows what might have happened. It might all have died down and everything have been all right again. I’ve often wondered. Still, perhaps it was just meant to be, eh? Me and Bill.’ She stared into the middle distance, remembering. ‘Anyway,’ she said, returning to the present, ‘I had that thing he wanted most, I was young.’
‘But you was only sixteen. He must have been years older.’ Cissie was obviously appalled by the idea.
‘Look, don’t get the wrong idea about him. These girls I’d met, they’d shown me how to do meself up a bit. Look older so I didn’t get no trouble from the law. I passed easily for nineteen, twenty. So he didn’t reckon I was that young. I mean, he ain’t the sort what likes kids or nothing funny like that. Not like some of ’em yer meet.’
Eileen poured herself another drink. Again Cissie refused the offer of one for herself.
‘Strange innit?’ Eileen mused. ‘When yer a kid, yer spend all yer time trying to look older, then when yer get to my age… Still, although I might not be that fresh now, I was back then all right. When yer think of it! All fresh and beautiful I was, but scared and all. Scared of what would become of me on the streets. Shame I never realised then what I should really have been scared of. Then I could’ve used me loaf, sold a few bits and pieces on the quiet like, to have a few quid to put by for harder times. You can’t imagine what it’s like having nothing put by when you’ve been used to a good life.’
Cissie shifted uncomfortably – yes she could imagine it. ‘Getting old, that’s what I should really have been scared of. Losing me looks. After all, what’s the point of someone having you as their bit o’ stuff if you ain’t got the looks no more? I got used to men being nice to me because of the way I looked. Then it all changed. I know I ain’t ugly, well, not yet I ain’t, but the turps and the late nights ain’t helping me beauty routine much. I mean, look at me, I’m wearing more and more bloody slap every day.’ She laughed, mocking herself. ‘It’d scare the bleed’n life out of yer if yer saw me without me warpaint.’
For a brief moment Cissie felt she should protest in some way, insist that Eileen was still a good-looking woman, but, in truth, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. It would only make things worse.
‘That’s why I didn’t blame Bill when he got tired of me,’ Eileen continued in a matter-of-fact tone which couldn’t conceal her pain. ‘Told me I had to start “earning me own way”, didn’t he? So that’s when I got into this business.’ Eileen lifted her hands and began studying her nails again, anything to avoid Cissie’s gaze. ‘While he was keeping me, I never ever went with no other men, yer know. Not that I ever wanted to, but he would never have allowed it if I had. I kidded meself he was jealous at the time, but I knew he was just scared of me getting a dose and passing it on to him. But once he’d finished with me, I could have gone with a whole bloody regiment and then their mascot goat for good measure and all, for all he cared.’
She leant back in the armchair, closed her eyes and sighed. ‘I had a nice little flat all of me own once. Lovely it was. I had a char coming in, the lot. Now look at me.’
‘Didn’t you do something?’ Cissie could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘Tell him no?’
Slowly, Eileen opened her eyes and made a clumsy attempt to refill her glass, spilling most of her effort around her feet on to the grubby mat. ‘How could I? Trouble was, I still loved him. Still do. So now I drink to try and forget all about it.’
‘Yer mum or dad never tried to find yer?’
Eileen wrinkled her nose and shook her head. ‘No. Not really. At first, when they knew I had a few quid, they was interested for a while. Came sniffing round. But when they found out that Turner used to pay me bills and buy me things, but didn’t give me no money – that would’ve made me too independent see – they sort of gave up. I ain’t seen ’em in years. I think about ’em though. Especially when I’m a bit down like.’
Cissie swallowed hard; this was getting a bit too close to home. ‘You ever have any kids?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘No. One visit too many to granny and her knitting needle put paid to that.’
Eileen’s voice was increasingly slurred, her movements more erratic. ‘I never knew he was married, yer know. I swear on my life. Well, not at first I didn’t. And then I thought he was unhappy with the old cow.’
‘You loved him and he lied to you,’ Cissie said gently. ‘That wasn’t fair.’
‘No, no he never lied. He never told me he was unhappy. I just sort of wanted him to be. It was as easy and as stupid as that. What more can I tell yer?’
Cissie fiddled nervously with her hair. If she didn’t ask her now, she would soon be too drunk to answer. ‘You can tell me how yer know Davy,’ she breathed.
Eileen laughed coarsely, the girlish sounds made harsh by the drink. ‘Sorry, darling, I ain’t being rude, but you’ve got the wrong idea there. I’d be the first to admit that your Davy was a fine-looking man, but no one involved with Turner would ever dare come near me. Even now.’
Cissie was now on the very edge of the bed. ‘There, you’ve said it again. What d’you mean, “involved with Turner”?’
‘It ain’t my place to say, girl. Sorry.’
‘You’re making all this up, ain’t yer?’ Cissie sn
atched her bag from the floor and stood up. ‘I don’t know why, but you are.’
‘All right. All right. Don’t get yerself excited. Let’s just say Davy had business interests linked to Bill’s. Satisfied?’
‘No. No I’m not bloody satisfied.’ Cissie could barely spit out the words. ‘How d’you know Davy? I want to know.’
Eileen shrugged innocently. ‘He was a friend.’
‘Well he never mentioned you. And I hope you ain’t trying to suggest he was a “friend” like that dirty pig in here earlier.’
‘No. I ain’t. And don’t look at me like that. Cos I could be a friend to you, Cissie Flowers. And if you had any sense, yer’d know how important it is to have friends. Especially in your position, a young widow with kids.’
Cissie shook her head in disgust, turned her back on Eileen and started towards the door.
‘One more thing, darling,’ Eileen called after her, her voice thick with sarcasm. ‘Big Bill Turner ain’t changed, yer know. He eats pretty little things like you for breakfast.’
Forgetting her earlier qualms about touching the door with her bare hands, Cissie grabbed hold of the filthy handle, ripped it back on its hinges and left without saying another word.
As she walked back towards Poplar through the dusty streets – not having the money for the tram fare – Cissie was oblivious of the early evening crowds making their way home from work. She was far too wrapped up in what Eileen had said even to notice the elbows and bags that dug into her sides and bashed her legs. With her worries, how could she be concerned with something as trivial as getting a few bumps and bruises?
First she had lost Davy, and now this new madness had come into her life. Davy involved with Turner? He couldn’t have been. He just couldn’t.
But she genuinely didn’t know what to think or believe any more. On the one hand, Eileen was obviously unreliable – a pathetic, drunken whore – but how else had she known Davy apart from her connections with Turner? That Davy might have been one of her ‘friends’, a client, was more than Cissie could even contemplate.
The Flower Girl Page 11