‘Maybe more than you think.’
Cissie listened, stunned, as Peter Clayborne outlined an offer which, had anyone told her he would be making, would have had her laughing in their face. But here she was, listening to him with her very own ears.
‘Let’s get this right,’ she said, leaning forward as though she was having difficulty understanding him. ‘You’re telling me that when yer knock down that old factory and put up this new office place, yer gonna let me rent one of the shops on the ground floor?’
‘That’s right, Mrs Flowers.’ Clayborne looked and sounded relieved, as though he’d managed to get something off his chest that had been stuck there like a fishbone. ‘And very fine shops they’ll be too. Curved plate-glass windows. Bronze handles on the doors. All the latest fitments. Very attractive. More like Paris than London.’
‘Well,’ Cissie snorted derisively, ‘that’s all right then, ain’t it? So long as they’re flaming attractive.’
She shook her head disbelievingly as her final glimmer of hope fell away as surely as petals from a dead rose.
‘Can yer tell me, Mr Clayborne,’ she went on, stifling back the tears of disappointment and rage, ‘how exactly yer reckon I’m supposed to afford the rent on some posh shop with curved sodding windows and bronze bloody handles?’
‘I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement, Mrs Flowers.’
‘Some sort of arrangement?’ she repeated, stressing each word as though it were in a foreign language. ‘Some sort of bloody arrangement?’
As she rose to her feet and strode towards him, Cissie was in too much of a temper to notice how he hurriedly grasped the door handle behind his back as though blocking the way to the room beyond.
‘What would you wanna come to some sort of arrangement with the likes o’ me for?’ she demanded, jabbing her finger at his face.
Clayborne now looked as terrified as she had felt when she had first entered the office.
‘Because I think a woman like you could go far,’ he burbled, his chin tucked so close to his chest that he could barely speak.
‘Aw, do you now? And what’d be in it for you if I did go far as you so bloody well charmingly put it?’
Clayborne frowned as though the answer had, for the moment, escaped him. He thought for a bit then nodded; something had come to him. ‘It’s my age,’ he said as though that were a plausible explanation.
‘Your age?’ Cissie now sounded more confused than angry. ‘What the hell’s that gotta do with the price of cod?’
‘Let’s just say it’s a whim.’ He smiled weakly. ‘You remind me of myself when I first started out as a raw young man with hardly a button to my name.’
Clayborne tipped his head to one side, and raised his eyebrows in what he intended to be an appealingly friendly gesture, but which only served to further infuriate Cissie.
‘For a start,’ she yelled, ‘from the state of this dump it don’t look like yer exactly rolling in it. So what would you know about going far?’ She began jabbing her finger at him again. ‘And as for yer age, you ain’t exactly no granddad, now are yer? Yer can’t be no more than bloody thirty years old.’
Cissie moved even closer, and her finger was now making contact with his chest. ‘I wouldn’t trust you, Mr Clayborne, as far as I could flaming well throw yer, and that wouldn’t be very far, yer great long streak of nothing.’
Clayborne responded to her insult with another feeble attempt at a charming smile. ‘You’re a young woman after my own heart,’ he beamed manically. ‘Full of spirit. I like that.’
Cissie could feel herself twitching with temper at his audacity. What was wrong with some men? ‘Are you married, Mr Clayborne?’ she asked, staring up into his watery hazel eyes.
‘I am, as a matter of fact, but I don’t see what that has to do with anything.’
‘Aw, but I think you do, Mr Clayborne. And d’yer know what? Yer don’t have to say another word, cos I know exactly what yer gonna say next. Ain’t that strange?’
Claybome frowned anxiously. He’d been cornered by a madwoman.
‘Yer gonna tell me how you and yer wife don’t get on like yer used to. Am I right?’
Cissie was now very close to him, so close that she could see the sweat beading on his forehead.
‘No. No. You’re not right,’ he said hurriedly. ‘In fact, you have entirely the wrong impression of me, Mrs Flowers. Absolutely entirely wrong. I never intended you to get that impression, I assure you.’
Cissie stepped away from Clayborne and looked him up and down. She didn’t bother even to try to hide her contempt. ‘You ain’t the only one who’s ever made me that sort of offer, yer know, and yer probably won’t be the last, but I’m telling yer this for nothing, Mr Peter Clayborne, I ain’t gonna say yes to no one what makes me that sort of offer. Not ever. Got it?’
‘I really must insist,’ Clayborne said, darting a nervous glance over his shoulder at the door. ‘You’ve completely misunderstood me. And,’ he added, his voice rising to a frantic whine, ‘I would like you to know, that this offer has a time limit.’ He was speaking quicker and quicker as though he were being timed against the clock. ‘And I need to have your answer tomorrow as to whether you will be taking up the offer of the shop lease.’
‘Yer don’t give up easy,’ she sneered. ‘I’ll give yer that.’ With a final flick of her eyes up and down his tall, besuited body, Cissie turned on her heel and walked purposefully over to the door by which she’d entered.
‘So, I’ll expect to hear from you tomorrow then?’
‘I wouldn’t put no money on it if I was you, mate.’
She grasped the handle, pulled open the door and looked round at Clayborne, who was still jammed up tight against the door opposite.
‘There’s just one thing I’d like to know.’
‘Yes?’ he replied eagerly, in the desperate hope that she had changed her mind.
‘Why are yer guarding that door like that? You got yer bleed’n old woman in there or something?’
When Clayborne, dry-mouthed and sweating profusely, was absolutely certain that the sound of Cissie’s footsteps on the stone stairs leading down to the street had really stopped, he ran over to the open doorway and peered down into the gloom to make sure that she wasn’t hiding in the shadows of the stairwell, lurking there, ready to catch him out. He waited a moment, then a moment longer, and then, carefully closing the door behind him, he went back into the office and opened the interior door he had defended so resolutely.
‘She’s gone,’ he said stepping into the much bigger and more elaborately furnished room which lay beyond the outer office.
‘So I heard,’ Big Bill Turner replied.
Turner was sitting there in a studded, leather wing armchair, his feet propped up on the polished brass fender which surrounded the veined marble fireplace. He was staring into the flames, his eyes narrowed against the bright heat.
Jim Phillips, the wholesaler from the flower market, was standing on one side of him, and Bernie and Chalkie, another of Turner’s bullet-headed minders, were on the other. Each of the four men had a glass in his hand.
Jim seemed far less at ease than the other three, and sipped nervously at his drink, peering watchfully at the rest of them across the rim of his glass as he raised it to his lips.
‘Did you hear everything else all right, Mr Turner?’ Clayborne asked.
Turner tapped his finger along the length of his cigar, knocking a shower of grey ash and sparks into the blazing hearth. ‘Aw, I heard all right.’ He turned his head slowly until he was facing Clayborne.
From the redness of his eyes and his slurred speech, Clayborne guessed that Turner had been responsible for drinking the lion’s share of the now almost empty bottle of scotch that was standing on the little side table.
‘And I have to say,’ Turner mumbled, ‘that I weren’t very impressed by it.’
‘No?’ Clayborne’s voice was quavering.
‘No. I pay you good money, Cla
yborne. Very good money. And, after that little performance out there, I’d like yer to tell me why I should.’
‘You pay me to be your accountant, Mr Turner, and—’ Clayborne had begun surprisingly confidently, thinking himself to be on safe ground, but having seen Turner’s expression change to one of almost apoplectic fury, he immediately thought better of it and shut his mouth again.
‘No, Clayborne, I don’t pay yer to be me accountant.’ Turner rose unsteadily to his feet, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles stood out white against his skin. ‘I pay yer to be loyal to me. Bastard loyal.’
Clayborne took a step backwards. ‘I did my best, Mr Turner.’
‘Your best?’ Turner stared at him in disbelief. ‘Your bloody best?’
He snatched up his crystal tumbler from the side table and smashed it into the hearth, sending up shards of glittering glass and beads of amber whisky sparkling and dancing in the firelight.
He wasn’t shouting, but his ominously low tone, made garbled and faltering by the drink, was enough to terrify the now quaking accountant as Turner moved closer and closer towards him.
Chalkie dodged round both Turner and Clayborne and planted himself in the doorway, blocking the only way out of the room.
‘I pay people like them over there,’ Turner said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards Jim and Bernie, ‘so that they can do their job. So they can make my life easier. So that I don’t have to worry meself about little details. And that takes loyalty. Understand? Any sodding trained monkey can add up a row of figures but loyalty, that takes bastard brains.’
Jim gulped down the rest of his drink and watched, transfixed by the sordid scene of fear and menace unfolding in front of him. This wasn’t a world he was used to.
Clayborne nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Turner,’ he agreed readily, ‘I understand.’ Seeing the expression on Turner’s face, he’d have said that black was white if he’d have told him to.
But Clayborne’s agreement wasn’t enough for Turner, it wasn’t even what he really wanted. It was Cissie Flowers. Cissie, the bloody woman who was making him so angry. He was furious at the way she had, yet again, slipped out of his reach. And someone was going to pay.
He walked forward, backing Clayborne against the wall, and leant over him. The accountant was tall, but Big Bill Turner dwarfed the man’s skinny frame with his own massive bulk.
‘I don’t get it,’ Turner said, spreading his hands to show his sadness. ’I’m putting me neck on the line, making deals with Plains, one of the hardest men in the East End. Buying up property so we can both cut our losses and go into a bit of legitimate business together. And d’yer know why I’m doing all this?’
Clayborne shook his head.
‘I’m doing it so I can look after them what work for me. Save ’em having to go out on the streets and doing one another in. And what do I get in return?’
Turner twisted round to see if Jim or Bernie cared to give him the answer. Very wisely, they didn’t. This was Turner’s show.
‘I’ll tell yer,’ Turner said, shaking his head sorrowfully. ‘Disloyalty, that’s what I get.’
He slammed his hand hard against the wall, sending the vibrations running through Clayborne’s gangly body.
‘And I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. And know what I don’t like even more?’
Claybome shook his head again, he was going to wet his trousers, he just knew he was.
‘I don’t like you messing it up for me with Davy Flowers’ old woman.’
Turner sighed and rubbed the balls of his thumbs hard into his eyes. He was tired, angry. Why did he have to do everything? Why couldn’t he trust anyone to do their job properly? Even the simplest thing and he couldn’t trust a single one of the prats to do things right for once. His head ached.
He wished Moe was there with him.
‘That little tart was begging for it. Ready for the picking,’ he said, slowly opening his eyes to stare at Clayborne. ‘And you messed it up for me. I really ain’t very happy about that.’
Turner’s fist moved at such a speed that Clayborne didn’t even realise he’d been punched until he felt as though his left kidney had exploded. He slumped forward, and rolled on to the floor, a stream of hot urine running down his leg and puddling out beneath him.
As Turner threw himself upon him, Clayborne felt the first ten or so blows, but after that, as the blood began to flow from his mouth, his nose, and then from his ears and, by the feel of it, from whatever internal organ it was that enabled him to breathe, Clayborne fell into the blissful oblivion of unconsciousness.
All the while that Turner kicked and punched and pummelled, in a blind frenzy of hate and vengefulness that had very little, if anything, to do with the man who had become the object of his rage, Chalkie stood, arms folded, covering the doorway, watching on with a blank, disinterested stare as Clayborne was pounded to a pulp before him. And Bernie stood against the wall opposite, calmly sipping at his scotch.
Jim wasn’t made of such strong stuff, he wasn’t used to seeing such violence; the worst he had seen were the fights in the pub after work between drunken porters who would more often than not leave as the best of mates, with their arms around one another’s shoulders.
He felt the vomit rise in his throat and, rushing to the hearth, Jim spewed into the coal scuttle, the only possible receptacle in the room he could see as appropriate. Even in such a state of nausea and disgust, he didn’t dare risk spoiling Turner’s rugs.
He then dropped down into the leather armchair, plugged his thumbs into his ears and covered his face with his hands. Anything to try to block out the terrible sight of someone being kicked around like a broken toy by a man who had obviously lost all sense of reason.
Bending down to wipe the blood from the toes of his highly polished shoes with the handkerchief Chalkie had handed to him, Turner smiled with the serenity of satiation. ‘He’ll know better next time,’ he said pleasantly.
With that, he stood up, took a cigar from his inside pocket, stuck it between his lips, and stood there, with his arms outstretched for Bernie to help him on with his overcoat.
‘You, Phillips,’ he said, shrugging down into the heavy camel-haired Crombie, ‘get this mess cleared up. And you, Chalkie, you nip across and get the takings off o’ Fat Stan and get ’em down to Mile End. I’ve gotta be off. Mrs Turner’s expecting me in for me tea.’
Turner rolled his eyes and smiled fondly, as though he was dealing with slightly slow children. ‘And what’s the matter with you, Bernie? Go on, don’t just stand there. Go and get that motor started. Yer know how she hates it when I’m late.’
Bemie left without a word, quickly followed by Chalkie.
Turner walked slowly over to the fire and, crouching forward, he took a spill from the box, lit it in the flames and then touched it to the end of his cigar. ‘And don’t forget to clean out this coal scuttle, will yer, Phillips?’ he added amiably.
Turner stayed there for the moment, staring down at Clayborne who was laying beside him on the fireside rug. Apart from the blood and urine, he looked for all the world as though he was curled up for an early evening nap in front of the fire. He looked almost cosy.
With his head cocked to one side, Turner considered the unconscious man. Then he stood up, aimed a final kick hard into Clayborne’s kidneys, shook his head sadly at the man’s failings, and sauntered over to the door, leaving the room, and a grey-faced Jim Phillips to his tidying up.
Chapter 18
‘You’re back early, Cis.’ Ernie Mills peered over his newspaper at his neighbour as she came into his kitchen. ‘What, Monday turn out as bad for business as yer thought it would?’
‘No, I just fancied packing the stall away early that’s all.’
Ernie nodded approvingly. ‘So business was good then, eh?’
Cissie managed a thin smile. ‘Something like that, Ern.’
‘Well, good luck to yer, girl, that’s what I reckon.’
<
br /> Cissie looked around the jumbled but cosy little room with a frown. ‘Gladys and the kids not here?’
Ernie folded his paper and shoved it down between his leg and the side of the chair. ‘No. It was such a nice afternoon, as soon as the older ones got in from school, Gladys thought she’d make the most of it. Take ’em all off for a bit of a walk like.’
‘Where’d they go?’
‘Down Chris Street, to have a look on the stalls.’
‘She’s brave, taking that little mob.’
‘Well, it’s like Gladys said, before yer know where we, Cis, the dark nights’ll be drawing in again and the kids won’t see a bit of sun on their knees for months. I’d have gone with ’em, but Nipper wasn’t feeling too bright.’
‘Is he all right?’ Cissie asked, concerned as much for Ernie and Gladys as for the old man. She knew that if a doctor’s visit was called for, it would mean the pair of them going without proper meals for the rest of the week to pay for it.
‘He’s just a bit worn out, that’s all. Not getting any younger, is he? Like the rest of us.’ Ernie raised his eyes towards the ceiling. ‘He’s up having a bit of a lay down before he has his tea.’
Ernie stood up. ‘Here, talking about tea. What am I thinking of? Make yerself at home, Cis, and I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘No, yer all right, Ern.’ Cissie held up her hand to stop him going over to the stove. She couldn’t let him go wasting their tea on her. ‘You sit yerself back down. I don’t want nothing, thanks. I’ll just have a walk along and meet Gladys.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yeah, thanks all the same, Ern.’ Cissie bowed her head to hide her embarrassment. ‘I ain’t daft, I realise Glad’s just trying to give old Nipper a bit of a blow from all the noise. Me and the kids’ve been a right nuisance to yer all, ain’t we? I just wish there was some way I—’
‘Don’t even start thinking like that,’ Ernie reassured her.
‘I can’t help it, Ern, I feel a right liberty-taker at times the way I’ve used you lot.’
‘Look, Gladys took the chavvies out cos she wanted to. You know what she’s like.’
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