The young girl was worried. Really concerned about something, and Fat Stan was sure that he wasn’t going to like what she had to say. His wife had warned him enough times lately: he wasn’t getting any younger, or any fitter, and all this villainy lark was a young man’s game. And she was right.
‘I can’t believe what’s just happened, Stan.’
Cissie swallowed a hefty gulp of her gin, the unaccustomed strength of so much liquor making her nose sting. She narrowed her eyes and shook her head free of the tingling. ‘It’s my fault, I suppose,’ she went on, in a slightly strangulated voice. ‘I was getting so conceited. So bloody smug. Going on about how well everything was going; how lucky I was. I suppose I was just asking for it all to go wrong, wasn’t I?’ She dropped her chin and buried her face in her hands.
‘Look, love,’ Fat Stan said in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. ‘You drink that up while I go and get us both another one. Then you can tell yer Uncle Stan all about it.’
Fat Stan took as long as he could up at the bar, anything to give him a bit of thinking time. What was he supposed to do? He was taking bets he didn’t wanna take for Turner. There was getting on for a bloody hundred pound in that money apron at times. He was keeping an eye on a girl he wanted nothing to do with. And now he was expected to give her a bleed’n shoulder to cry on into the bargain. She was a good enough kid, but he didn’t need all this aggravation, he really didn’t, not at his time of life.
When he could spin out his time at the bar no longer, he returned to the table with their drinks, prepared, at least, to let her tell him what was upsetting her. He felt he owed her that.
* * *
‘So, like I say,’ Cissie continued, ‘it was only one of ’em what spoke. He said they was…’ She made a little fluttering gesture with her hand as she tried to remember his exact words. ‘Representatives. That’s it, representatives.’
All the while she was talking, Stan listened attentively, nodding and taking note. Then, when he was sure she had finished, he swallowed the last of his pint and stood up.
‘Look, Cis,’ he said, as though he was humouring a fretful child, ‘it ain’t no good you getting yourself all wound up, now is it? If they’re gonna knock the place down, they’re gonna knock it down. What can you, or me, or anyone else for that matter, do about it?’
‘But it’s me living, Stan,’ she wailed.
‘Tell me,’ he said, sitting down again, ‘d’yer really wanna stand outside a poxy factory flogging daisies for the rest of yer natural?’ He leant towards her and rested his massive arms on the table in front of him. ‘Just you think about it. A pretty young girl like you’s gonna hate it out there in the winter. I’m telling yer, bloody murder it is. Yer can’t imagine what it’s like on a dark January morning when yer fingers stick to the metal rods of the stall while yer trying to put it up, and the pipes are frozen and yer can’t get no water for yer vases. And the cost of the flowers! It’d break yer heart it would.’
Cissie stared down unseeingly at the tabletop. ‘I thought you’d be on my side, Stan. I thought you was me friend.’
‘I am, sweetheart. Course I am.’ He reached out and took her hand, covering it completely with just three of his fingers. ‘Now come on, why don’t yer just make hay while the sun shines? Yer’ve got a stall full o’ flowers out there to shift, and there’s all them punters just waiting for yer to part ’em from their wage packets.’
Cissie didn’t move. ‘But if I lose that pitch, how am I gonna pay Brownlow?’ she whispered, as much to herself as to Stan.
Fat Stan sighed inwardly. He hadn’t even heard of this one, whoever he was. Not another one on the firm to deal with, surely? A moneylender, maybe? Protection of some kind? Aw, well, in for a penny…
‘So, who’s this Brownlow?’ he asked, not really wanting to know.
‘He’s me landlord,’ sniffled Cissie.
‘So, he’s yer landlord, is he?’ Fat Stan handed Cissie his handkerchief, a cloth of such huge proportions it could have passed muster as a cot sheet. ‘Don’t cry, love, it’s only money, innit?’
Fat Stan really hated all this women’s business, all this crying and wailing, but at least it seemed as though Brownlow wouldn’t be causing him any problems. Turner had never mentioned landlords as being any concern of his.
But Fat Stan was wrong. As Cissie continued – telling him not only about her worries as to how she could possibly pay the rent if she couldn’t run the stall, but also about the stroke Brownlow had tried to pull when she couldn’t pay him just after Davy had died, when he’d suggested she should pay him in kind instead – then Stan knew that Brownlow was very much his concern. Turner would do his crust if he thought something like that was going on without him being told.
Retirement, despite its associated day-long enforced proximity to his wife and his nit-picking mother-in-law, was seeming a more and more attractive prospect to Fat Stan as he sat in the Three Tuns pub and wondered how Turner would react to this latest little titbit, that he knew, unfortunately, he had no other choice than to pass on to him.
* * *
The rest of the day passed in a haze for Cissie; all she could think about was the two men and what would happen if she lost the pitch. But it couldn’t happen, she kept telling herself. It couldn’t. Not after all she had gone through.
But the man had seemed so certain that it would. So what would happen to her in, when was it, ten weeks or so, when the developers moved in?
Cissie needed help now more than she had needed it at any time since the day Davy had been killed. If only Davy was still with her. He would have known what to do. He always did.
She felt so useless; so stupid; so scared, like a lost child who knew she would never see her parents again.
Her parents. If only she could speak to them. That would be something. But they wouldn’t want her now. Not after the way she had treated them.
‘I think you’ve given me too much, my dear,’ a softly spoken middle-aged man said to her, holding out a ten-shilling note. ‘You’ve given me change of a pound.’
Most of her other customers were also honest enough to tell her when, in her distracted state, she gave them too much change, but losing a few shillings of her day’s takings was the very least of Cissie’s worries. What concerned her above all was the thought of how she would take care of her two little ones if her living really was taken away from her. She’d been selfish, she knew that, but she’d never been a really bad person. Surely she didn’t deserve this. And Matty and Joyce certainly didn’t.
As she stood, wide-eyed and staring by her stall, nightmare visions of children’s homes and workhouses filled her mind with horrors she had never thought would ever come to haunt her, not pretty Cissie Flowers, a woman for whom something had always turned up. A woman whose life had been blessed with a wonderful husband and children.
Maybe everyone only got so much luck in their life, she thought, and she had used up all her allowance in a single go when she had met Davy. But she didn’t have Davy any more. So who could she turn to now? Jim Phillips?
He was certainly kind enough to help her, and he might know all about flowers, but she didn’t suppose for one minute that he had the first idea about property developers. That was something out of the league of anyone she had ever known or was ever likely to know. The most powerful person she would ever be likely to come across was Big Bill Turner.
Turner.
Cissie bit the inside of her cheek and stared down at the pavement, she didn’t even like the idea entering her mind. And anyway, even if she felt she could turn to the likes of him, she had to be realistic, what would a crook know about property?
But Turner had offered her another way out.
For the first time, Cissie seriously contemplated what it would be like if she accepted Turner’s proposition. Maybe life as a rich man’s mistress wouldn’t be so bad after all – not when compared to the workhouse.
Cissie was no fool, she could guess
that no woman would last very long with a man like Turner. He would no doubt soon become bored and move on to the next one. She only had to look at Eileen if she needed proof of that. But surely, if she used her loaf, she could get enough out of him to be able to take care of her family, enough to make the brief humiliation worthwhile?
It took a lot of effort, but Cissie made sure she had a smile on her face when she went to collect Matty and Joyce from Gladys’s. Everything she was doing was for the kids, after all, so she wasn’t going to let them see she was upset yet again. The poor little devils had seen enough tears since they had lost their father, they didn’t need her making things worse.
As she stepped into the passage of number four, Gladys came flying out of the kitchen and almost threw herself at Cissie.
‘You’ll never guess what’s happened, Cis,’ she gasped.
‘What? It ain’t the kids, is it?’
Gladys shook her head, making her hair bounce about her shoulders. ‘No, they’re fine, they’re in the kitchen with Ernie and Nipper. It’s Brownlow.’
‘Brownlow?’
‘Yeah. He’s only in hospital, ain’t he. The law found him. Down by the Cut, he was. On the towpath. In a right old state. He’d been beaten up good and proper. And, yer’ll never believe this bit, his hair had all been cut off.’
‘His hair?’
‘Yeah, his hair!’
‘Who did it?’
Gladys shrugged. ‘Who knows? He definitely ain’t telling. Too scared I suppose. But, like everyone’s saying, there’d be a bloody long queue o’ suspects if they lined up everyone what had it in for the bastard. But that ain’t all. He only had this card thing hanging around his neck, didn’t he.’
Gladys leant forward and whispered behind her hand, her eyes wide. ‘And yer’ll never guess what it said.’
Cissie swallowed hard. ‘No. What?’
‘It said: Next time it’ll be yer…’ Gladys looked over her shoulder along the passage, checking that none of the children had wandered out of the kitchen.
‘Yer what?’
Gladys gulped. ‘It said: Next time it’ll be yer, you know.’ She lowered her eyes and pointed in the region of her apron pockets. ‘Yer dick!’
Chapter 15
‘Look, I know you ain’t had yer tea yet, Matt, but I promise, I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Matty looked up at Cissie with his big, pale eyes. ‘I’ll be all right, Mum.’
It almost broke Cissie’s heart, how grown-up Matty sounded. It wasn’t all right. How could it be right for her little boy to be taking on so much at his age? Only five years old and he was acting more like a grown-up than she herself ever had, until a few months ago that is, when she had been forced to grow up. Cissie only wished she could do more to protect him.
But although it hurt her badly to see him that way, it also gave her the strength she needed to go over to see Sammy Clarke, cap in hand, yet again. Because when she saw Matty’s anxious little face, she certainly didn’t have to remind herself why she was going over there.
It wasn’t money, or even tick, she was after this time, however, it was advice. Cissie needed someone to tell her what to do about those men and their boss, this property developer, whoever he was. She needed someone to make everything all right again, to put the world back into some sort of order that she could understand.
After her initial rejection of going to Jim for help, Cissie had reconsidered the idea. She had thought long and hard about it, but had, in the end, finally decided that it wasn’t very sensible after all. And it wasn’t anything to do with his trade being in flowers rather than property. Business was business after all, and he was definitely no fool in that area, he made a very good living for himself. No, it was more to do with Cissie not wanting to become even more involved with him. Seeing him about work was difficult enough for her.
Every time Cissie set eyes on Jim she had to remind herself that he wasn’t available, she had to deny the feelings she had about him so that she didn’t make a fool of herself. So she couldn’t even begin to think what would happen to their already confusing relationship – on her part at least – if she went to him with her fears about the property developer. Cissie would have been asking him, a married man with children, for something that could so easily mean that their association would become far too intimate.
It wasn’t until Cissie had been dragging the stall wearily back to the lock-up, in the by then chilly late afternoon air, that the idea of going to Sammy Clarke about her problem had come to her. She was a bit surprised that she hadn’t thought of him sooner: he was sensible, reliable, he was in business, and, most important of all, she could depend on him wanting to help her.
But she shouldn’t really have been surprised. She’d realised months ago that that was the trouble with being worried: your head got muddled, you couldn’t think straight, and your energy just disappeared. Every little thing became almost too difficult even to contemplate tackling.
Once Cissie had reminded herself of that, she’d secured the lock-up for the night, had given herself a good shake and had climbed up into the truck ready to set off for home and to start sorting things out. It was no good wallowing in despair, she had told herself yet again, she had responsibilities, and, exhausted by her worries or not, she had to do something to ensure that she met them.
And that was why she was about to go over to see good old dependable Sammy Clarke.
Cissie bent down and kissed Matty tenderly on the top of his head. ‘Play nicely with yer soldiers for me, Matt. And try not to wake Nanna and Joycie from their nap, eh? Then when I get back from Sam’s, I’ll do us all something nice for our teas.’
* * *
Cissie was about to step out of her front door, when she saw Lena coming out of her house across the street.
The miserable-faced woman looked over at Cissie and sneered loudly, ‘Blimey, look who it ain’t! Don’t say yer actually at home with yer kids for once? What, couldn’t yer find no mug to mind ’em for yer?’
Cissie felt like going over there and slapping Lena’s cocky, rotten face for her, but she wouldn’t lower herself. Instead, she kept her mouth shut and just stood there on her doorstep, watching Lena striding jauntily along the street towards the corner shop, pulling her shopping bag primly up her arm as she paused to have a leisurely nose first into Elsie Collier’s, and then into Gladys Mills’s front windows as she passed their houses.
Cissie shook her head at the woman’s bare-faced cheek. She really was a cow.
She sighed loudly, knowing she couldn’t face the idea of going into the shop, not with Lena in there, and especially not with the way she was feeling – so fragile that the slightest thing could tip her, yet again, into weeping tears of self-pitying frustration. So she would, Cissie decided, let Lena finish her business in there first, and she would go over there afterwards. There, she’d decided.
But her pleasure at her decisiveness soon melted away. It was all very well thinking things, but doing them was a whole different matter. She was so tired.
She turned round slowly, stepped back into the passage and walked back along towards the kitchen as though she were in a dream. Why were all these things happening to her? And worse, why were they happening to her poor babies? What had they ever done to harm anyone?
She got no further than the kitchen doorway, and stood there, for a long time, watching Matty play. He looked so serious, so intent, with his little fair head bent over his toys, just like a miniature version of Davy.
With legs that felt as if they’d been weighted with lead, Cissie eventually walked over to him.
Hearing someone behind him, Matty looked round, startled.
‘Mum? You was quick.’
‘I ain’t been yet, babe,’ she said softly.
Crouching down on her haunches, Cissie gently took her son’s face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes; the eyes that should have been full of laughter and mischief, but were instead clouded with worry
and fear.
‘Yer know, Matt,’ she said, ‘people are so quick to make judgements about me. But they don’t know what’s inside me head, or me heart. Do they?’
Matty frowned, his expression more frightened than ever.
‘Yer dunno what I’m going on about, do yer, darling? But me, I know.’
She kissed him again, and brushed his floppy fair hair away from his face.
‘Five minutes, yeah,’ she promised, standing up.
Matty nodded solemnly, and returned to his soldiers.
* * *
Inside the shop, Elsie Collier, from number six, and Gladys were waiting with increasing impatience, while Lena put Sammy Clarke through his paces, objecting to every rasher of streaky as being either too fatty or too thickly cut; rejecting the wedge of cheese as being half an ounce heavier than she had asked for – even though Sammy had told her he’d only charge her for the quarter of a pound she’d wanted; and, finally, almost too much for the usually mild-mannered shopkeeper, she was now insisting on going through the tub of broken biscuits to pick out all the cream-filled bits.
‘Come on, Lena,’ Sammy coaxed her, ‘there’s only two hours till I close, yer know.’
‘Yeah, come on,’ Elsie chipped in, ‘I’ve got me gentlemen waiting.’
‘And I ain’t got all night, neither,’ added Gladys. She didn’t explain that her kids were famished as she’d not had any money to buy anything for their tea – her wages having gone to buy the two eldest second-hand boots from the market and to pay to keep the gas on for a few more hours – and had to wait on Cissie coming along with the envelope she now regularly gave her on a Friday evening.
Lena didn’t bat an eyelid of concern for either of the two women, instead she turned on Sammy. ‘Yer mum and dad would be ashamed if they could see the way yer running this place, Samuel Clarke,’ she said, discarding another handful of biscuits back into the drum and digging out a fresh lot. ‘They would never have been so rude to a good customer like me. They valued trade, they did. Knew what side their bread was buttered.’
The Flower Girl Page 20